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PETER COOPER 






THE POLITICAL 



FINANCIAL OPINIONS 



PETER COOPER. 



AUTOBIOGEAPHT OF HIS EARLY LIFE. 



EDITED BY 

Prof. J. C. ZACHOS, 

CURATOR AT THE COOPER UNION. 
New York. 



Neto Sork: 

TEOW'S PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY, 

205-213 East Twelfth Street. 
1877. 










COPTKIOHT, BT 

J. C. ZACHOS, 

1877. 






Tfow's 

Printing and Bookbinding Co., 

printers and bookbinders, 

305-213 East lzt/t St., 

KEW YORK. 



PREFACE. 



The " opinions," financial and political, formed by Mr. Peter Cooper and 
given in the following pages, have been the result of much anxious thought, 
reading, and reflection during the last five years,. under the pressure laid on 
every thoughtful mind and patriotic heart by the current events of the times. 
These events, confessedly, both in politics and in finance, have been disastrous 
and unhappy upon the interests and prosperity of the American people. Men 
have been divided as to the true reasons of this unhappy state of facts, but 
still all are agreed that such facts exist, and the causes of our political and 
financial troubles should be dispassionately inquired into, and the remedies 
should be applied speedily ; for we are fast drifting, as a nation, into an- 
archy and ruin. The republic is in danger, and it behooves every man to be 
at his post as a citizen and a voter. The questions involved are very simple, 
and with a little reflection and true patriotism, the simple ideas involved in 
the public policy of this government can be understood by every intelligent 

voter. 

Methods of administration are sometimes very difficult to determine, and 
require large experience and great knowledge of affairs. But the principles 
of public policy on which parties are formed, are generally very simple, and 
can be understood by the average American mind, if men would but use their 
own reason, and not pin their faith to party leaders whose interest it may be 
to mislead the people. Mr. Cooper has a hearty faith in the good sense and 
patriotism of the American people, when questions affecting the safety and 
honor of the republic are fairly put before them. He, himself, has only a 
common education, a common sense, and an earnest American patriotism to 
bring to bear on these questions of public policy. He, therefore, appeals to 
the American people from the common standpoint of thought and feeling 
which belongs to all, and gives his views in a plain and hearty manner, 
44 with good will to all, and with malice toward none." 

Above all, Mr. Cooper desires three principles of political and financial 
prosperity to be made an essential part of the Constitution and laws of the 
xepublic, in order to secure it permanence and happiness : 

First, A tariff not simply for revenue, but made discriminating and helpful 



IV PREFACE. 

to all the industries of the country, where the raw material and the labor can 
be furnished by our own people. 

Second, A national paper currency, issued solely by the Government, and 
made the only legal tender, receivable for all taxes and dues, and fundable 
at any time for an equitable rate of interest, by being made interconvertible 
with the bonds of the Government. 

The volume of this currency must be determined by law, as per capita. 

The value of this currency is determined by the rate of interest given by 
the interconvertible bond, and by its indispensable use for paying all debts, 
taxes, and dues that can be collected by law. 

The convertibility of this paper currency is secured by bonds " as good as 
gold," and by keeping its volume and its value at that point where its unit 
measure, or standard of value, requires it to represent a certain amount of 
weight and fineness in gold or silver, " dollar for dollar.' 1 ' 1 In other words, we 
want, as far as possible, an unfluctuating currency, both in volume and value; 
but Mr. Cooper thinks that such a currency cannot be obtained by making 
coin the sole legal tender and money of the country, and paper merely its 
representative. This paper can be made to represent all values directly, and 
not circuitously, through coin, by being made to represent the highest and 
most indispensable use of money — namely, to pay taxes, dues, debts, and to 
command interest, or secure an income. What can any " bullionist" desire of 
good money more than this — that it should be as " good as gold," and ac- 
complish all that money is used for ? 

This is what Mr. Cooper desires to accomplish for our " national currency." 

Thirdly, Mr. Cooper earnestly desires a " civil service " divorced from 
party politics, and organized for the public service, as are the departments of 
the army or navy, purely on personal qualification and thorough fitness. The 
offices to be held during good behavior, on moderate salaries, but pensions 
provided for all disqualified by age or sickness, and a provision made for 
the widows and orphans. 

These are the simple principles of administration which Mr. Cooper offers 
as his thorough and warm convictions. He hopes to make this little book one 
of the most useful, as it may be the last of those contributions to the welfare 
and progress of his beloved country, to which his best hopes and efforts have 
been devoted through a long life of eighty-seven years. 

J. C. ZACHOS, Editob. 
New York, July 28, 1877. 



A SKETCH OF THE 

EARLY DAYS AND BUSINESS LIFE 

OF 

PETER COOPER. 

An Autobiography. 



CHAPTER I. 

THE EARLY DAYS AND BUSINESS LIFE OF PETER COOPER. 

Peter Cooper was bom in the city of New York, February 12th, 
1791. He comes from a family distinguished for their unwavering 
devotion to the, cause of American Independence. His maternal grand- 
father, John Cambell, was Alderman of New York, and Deputy Quarter- 
master during the war. He sacrificed a large fortune in the cause of 
his country's freedom, and had nothing but a large quantity of " Conti- 
nental money," as an acknowledgment. Mr. Cooper often laughs at 
this " paper payment," but says, " it was precious stuff, after all, for it 
was an essential means of our gaining our Independence." He thinks 
it very unfair and illogical, however, to quote "Continental money,'* 
and " French assignats," against his theory of a national paper legal ten- 
der, for both the former were allowed to remain irredeemable and incon- 
vertible (the land conversion being made impossible), whereas he de- 
sires a currency which is both a legal tender and interconvertible into 
Government bonds at the will of the holder. His father was lieuten- 
ant in the patriot army, and at the close of the war returned to New 
York, where he engaged in business. 

The early part of Mr. Cooper's life is best told in -his own simple 
and conversational language, obtained in many conversations with the 
author, and characterized by that homely directness of statement of 
facts, which like Defoe's " Robinson Crusoe," gives wonderful charm to 
the life and character that pervade the facts. 

HIS FATHER AND MOTHER. 

" My father, after the Revolutionary war, had done a successful busi- 
ness in the manufacture of hats in the City of New York ; and when I 
was about three years old, he, like many others, became enamoured 
with a country life, and bought a place at Peekskill, built a store there, 
carried on the business of a country store-keeper, and built a church. 
He found plenty of custom all over the country that would buy on 
credit, and it was not more than two or three years before he found 
that nearly all of his property was in the hands of other people, and 
1 



that it was impossible for him to collect it. He believed devoutly that 
I should ' come to something ; ' for he named me Peter, after the great 
Apostle, and maintained that he was told to do so in a sort of ' waking 
vision.' My mother was an excellent woman, and did the best she 
could with a large family, narrow circumstances, and a changing home. 

" My father followed the business of a hatter, and the first I remember 
was being utilized in this business by being set to pull the hair out of 
rabbit skins, when my head was just above the table. I remained in this 
business until I could make every part of a hat. My father finally sold 
out his hatter's business to my eldest brother, by a former wife, and 
commenced the brewing of ale in the town of Peekskill. It was my 
business to deliver the kegs of ale to the different places in town and 
country where it had been sold. Finding this a ' slow business ' my 
father bought a place at Catskill, where he commenced again the hat- 
ter's business, and also that of making bricks. I was made useful in 
this business in carrying and handling the bricks for the drying process. 

" My father at length finding that his business at Catskill did not 
answer his expectations, sold out and removed to Brooklyn, 1ST. Y. 

" Here I worked again at the hatter's business with my father until 
again he sold out and bought some property in Newburg, N. Y.,. on 
which he erected a brewery. At this business I continued with my 
father until I was seventeen. 

"The only time I ever trusted to chance for any profit, was about this 
time, when I got a very wholesome lesson. I had earned about ten 
dollars beyond my immediate wants, which I invested, by the advice of 
a relative, in lottery tickets, all which, fortunately for me, drew blanks. 
This impressed upon me the folly of looking to games of chance for any 
source of gain or livelihood. 



HIS APPRENTICESHIP. 

" In my seventeenth year I entered as apprentice to the coach -making 
business. I remained in this four years, till I was of age, and had 
thoroughly learned the business. During my apprenticeship I received 
twenty-five dollars a year for my services; to this sum I added some- 
thing by working at night at coach carving, and such other work as I 
could get. My grandmother gave me the use of a room, in one of her 
rear buildings on Broadway, where I spent much of my time in nightly 
work, instead of going with other apprentices who too often went with 
loose companions and contracted habits that proved their ruin. One 
such example impressed itself very strongly on my mind at that time. 



It was that of a young man who literally rotted and died of disease 
before he was sixteen years of age. 

"During my apprenticeship I made for my employer a machine for 
mortising the hubs of carriages, which proved very profitable to him, 
and was, perhaps, the first of its kind used in this country. 

" When I was twenty-one years old, my employer offered to build me 
a shop and set me up in business, but as I always had a horror of being 
burdened with debt, and having no capital of my own, I declined his 
kind offer. 

THE MACHINE FOR SHEARING CLOTH. 

" As soon as I was of age I went to the town of Hempstead, L. I., to 
see my brother. Here I was persuaded to work for a man at the 
making of machines for shearing cloth. I continued at this for three 
years, for a dollar and fifty cents a day, which was regarded as very 
large wages at that time. I saved enough at the end of my engagement 
to buy the right of the State of New York for a machine for shearing 
cloth, and I commenced the manufacture of these machines on my own 
account. This business proved very successful. The first money I re- 
ceived for the sale of my machines was from Mr. Vassar, of Pough- 
keepsie, who afterwards founded that noble institution for female 
education, called the Yassar College, at Poughkeepsie. My sales to 
Mr. Yassar also included one of the patent rights for the county in 
which he resided. This put in my possession so large an amount of 
money according to my ideas at that time, about five hundred dollars, 
that I was very much elated and rejoiced at what I considered my 
great good fortune. But my joy was soon turned to mourning. On 
my return from Poughkeepsie I visited my father, who lived then at 
Newburg. I found the family in the deepest affliction on account of 
the pressure of debts which my father was unable to pay. The money 
I had just received for my machines enabled me to pay the most press- 
ing of these debts, and left me barely the means to purchase materials 
to commence the making of new machines. Besides this, I became 
surety for my father for debts not yet matured, which I paid as they 
fell due, and in consequence of this my. father never had the mortifi- 
cation of failing in business. The same is true in my own affairs, not- 
withstanding some public statements made to the contrary by persons 
ignorant of the facts. 

" So far from ever hjwing failed in business, I do not remember the 
week or month when every man who has ever worked for me did not 
get his pay when it was due. This is strictly true, through a business 



life of more than sixty years, in which I have had at times, as many aa 
twenty-five hundred people in my employment. 

" The coach-making business, I never followed after serving out my 
apprenticeship. But soon after I commenced the manufacture of 
machines for shearing cloth, I made an improvement that enabled me 
to sell these machines as fast as I could make them. At this time they 
were in great demand, in consequence of the war of 1812 with Eng- 
land, which stopped our commerce with that country. At the close of 
the war, however, this business lost its value, and I gave it up. 

" It is worth while to mention here that the principle and method of 
my machine for shearing cloth was precisely the one now used so largely 
in mowing and reaping machines ; and this was so obvious that a gentle- 
man seeing my machine at work suggested that a similar machine might 
be made for mowing grass, and asked me to make for him a model for 
this purpose. This was operated for the purpose of cutting the grass 
in his yard, and proved entirely successful, long before any machine 
for mowing had been invented or patented by others. 

COMMENCES MERCANTILE BUSINESS. 

" After some three years' continuance in this business of manufacture, 
I bought a twenty-years' lease of two houses and six lots of ground 
where the ' Bible House ' now stands, opposite the Cooper Union. 
On this ground I erected four wooden dwelling-houses. I was engaged 
at this time in the grocery business, in which I continued for three 
years. 

u Soon after this, I purchased a glue factory, with all its- stock and 
buildings, on a lease of twenty-one years, for three acres of ground, on 
what was then known as the '"old middle road," between Thirty-first 
and Thirty-fourth streets. Here I continued to manufacture glue, oil, 
whiting, prepared chalk, and isinglass to the end of my lease. I then 
bought ten acres of ground on Maspeth avenue, Brooklyn, where the 
business has continued to the present time. 

" What I made by building machines and in the grocery business had 
enabled me to pay for the glue factory on the day of the purchase. 



THE BALTIMORE RAILROAD AND THE FIRST LOCOMOTIVE IN THE COUNTRY. 

** In 1828 I purchased three thousand acres of land within the city 



limits of Baltimore for one hundred and five thousand dollars ($105,000). 
On a part of that property, I erected the Canton Iron Works, which, 
afterwards, 1 sold to Mr. Abott, of Baltimore. I was drawn into this 
speculation in Baltimore, by two men who represented that they had 
large means, and we bought together three thousand acres of land in 
the city of Baltimore for one hundred and five thousand dollars 
($105,000), taking the whole shore from Fell's Point dock for three 
miles. After paying my part of the money, I soon found that I had 
paid all that had been paid upon the property, and that I was even 
paying the board of the two men who had agreed to take part in the 
purchase. Finding that to be the situation, I was compelled to say 
to them that they must pay their part or sell out, or buy me out. 
Neither of them having the ability to buy, I finally succeeded in get- 
ting them to state a price ; one offered to go out for ten thousand dollars 
($10,000), the other for a smaller sum; which offers I accepted and 
bought them out. 

"When we first purchased the property it was in the midst of a great 
excitement created by a promise of the rapid completion of the Baltimore 
and Ohio Railroad, which had been commenced by a subscription of five 
dollars per share. In the course of the first year's operations they had 
spent more than the five dollars per share. But the road had to make so 
many short turns in going around points of rocks that they found they 
could not complete the road without a much larger sum than they had 
supposed would be necessary ; while the many short turns in the road 
seemed to render it entirely useless for locomotive purposes. The prin- 
cipal stockholders had become so discouraged that they said, they would 
not pay any more, and would lose all they had already paid in. After 
conversing with them, I told them that if they would hold on a little 
while, I would put a small locomotive on the road, which I thought 
would demonstrate the practicability of using steam-engines on the 
road, even with all the short turns in it. I got up a small engine for 
that purpose, and put it on the road, and invited the stockholders to 
witness the experiment. After a great deal of trouble and difficulty 
in accomplishing the work, the stockholders came, and thirty-six men 
were taken into a car, and, with six men on the locomotive, which 
carried its own fuel and water, and having to go up hill eighteen feet 
to a mile, and turn all the short turns around the points of rocks, we 
succeeded in making the thirteen miles, on the first passage out, in one 
hour and twelve minutes ; and we returned frori Ellicott's Mills to 
Baltimore in fifty-seven minutes. 



6 

"This locomotive was built to demonstrate that cars could be drawn 
around short curves, beyond anything believed in at that time to be 
possible. The success of this locomotive also answered the question of 
the possibility of building railroads in a country scarce of capital, and 
with immense stretches of very rough country to pass, in order to 
connect commercial centres, without the deep cuts, the tunnelling, and 
levelling which short curves might avoid. My contrivance saved this 
road from bankruptcy. 

THE»IRON WORKS. 

"The discouragement and stoppage of progress in improvement in the 
city of Baltimore that had been occasioned by the state of things in the 
Baltimore and Ohio Railroad- made it difficult to do anything with the 
property before mentioned but to keep it ; and in order to make it pay 
something towards meeting the cost, taxes, etc.,T determined to build 
iron works upon it. I had four or five hundred tons of iron ore raised, 
dug, etc., at Lazaretto Point, and I determined to cut the wood off of 
the property, which was being stolen in every direction, and to burn it 
into charcoal, and use it up in making charcoal iron. For which purpose 
I built a rolling-mill, which I afterwards sold to Mr. Abbot. In my 
efforts to make iron, T had to commence to burn the wood into char- 
coal, and in order to do that, I erected large kilns, twenty-five feet in 
diameter, twelve feet high, circular in form, hooped around with iron 
at the top, arched over so as to make a tight place in which to put the 
wood, with single bricks left out in different places in order to smother 
the fire out when the* wood was sufficiently burned. • 

A NARROW ESCAPE. 

11 After having burned the coal in one of these kilns very perfectly, and 
believing the fire entirely smothered out, we attempted to take the coal 
out of the kiln ; but when we had got it about half-way out, the coal 
itself took fire, and the men, after carrying water for some time to ex- 
tinguish it, gave up in despair. I then went myself to the door of the 
kiln to see if anything more could be done, and just as I entered the 
door the gas itself took fire, and enveloped me in a sheet of flame. 

" I had to run some ten feet to get out, and in doing so my eyebrows 
and whiskers were burned, and my fur hat was scorched down to the 
body of the fur. How I escaped I know not. I seemed to be literally 
blown out by the explosion, and I narrowly escaped with my Life. 



riKST GREAT SUCCESSFUL OPERATION. 

" After seeing the difficulties that attended the making of iron there, 
I determined, having so large a property on my hands, to sell it for 
what I could get, and at the first oft'er made. I succeeded in getting 
an offer of nearly what it had cost me from two men from Boston, Amos 
Binney and Edmund Monroe. They formed out of the property what 
is now known as the Canton Co. I took a considerable portion of 
my pay in stock, at forty-four dollars the share— par value one hun- 
dred dollars. I reserved the iron works sold to Mr. Abbot ; and, 
as good luck would have it, the stock commenced rising almost at once, 
as soon as it was put into form, and continued to go up in the market 
until it attained the enormous figure of two hundred and thirty dollars 
per share. This enabled me to sell out my stock to a very great ad- 
vantage, so that I made money by the operation. 

" I then returned to my old business in New York, and after one or 
two years, built the iron factory in Thirty-third street near Third avenue. 
I leased it to a man who had it for one or two years and failed, and I 
had to take it off his hands. I turned it into a rolling mill for rolling 
iron and making wire, and ran it for some years. 

" I then removed it to Trenton, N. J., where T bought water power to 
carry the works on, and enlarged the works by building a mill and a 
wire factory. A few years later I built three large blast furnaces at 
Phillipsburg, the largest then known, near Easton, Penn.; bought the 
Andover mines, and built a railroad through a rough country for eight 
miles, to bring the ore down to the furnaces, at the rate of 40,000 tons 
a year. After running the works for several years I was induced to 
form them into a company called the Trenton Iron Works, including 
the rolling-mills and the blast furnaces, and 11,000 acres known as 
the Kingwood property. I had built a second rolling-mill and wire 
factory in Trenton, which was also included in the company. I sold 
one half of these works in the formation of the company. This con- 
tinued for a number of years, when a division was made, and the com- 
pany took one part of the property, the blast furnaces, and I took the 
rolling-mills and the Ringwood property. This property is still in the 
family. • 

" During all this time I had continued the manufacture of glue, isin- 
glass, oil, prepared chalk, Paris white, and also the grinding of white 
lead, and fulling of buckskins, for the manufacture of buckskin leather. 
" It was in one of those mills above mentioned, that the first iron 



8 

beams were rolled, now so much used in fire-proof buildings. In plan- 
ning the building of the Cooper Union I desired to make it fire-proof 
as far as possible, and found no such iron beams could be obtained. I 
determined to have them rolled at one of my mills ; but found, in 
the end, that the necessary experiments and suitable machinery had 
cost me seventy-five thousand dollars. It has proved, however, . a 
profitable business since." 

THE LAYING OP THE OCEAN CABLE. f 

A very interesting episode in Mr. Cooper's life was the interest he 
took, and the personal efforts he made in behalf of that most important 
and difficult of modern enterprises, the laying of an ocean cable. 

It is hot too much to say, that to the perseverance, energy, and un- 
conquerable faith of Mr. Cooper and two or three others, whom he men- 
tions, we owe that great gift to modern progress and civilization. 

I have often heard the narrative from his lips, and give it very much 
in his own words : 

" It is now twenty years since I became the President of the North 
American Telegraph Company, when it controlled more than one-half 
of all the lines then in the country ; also President of the New York, 
Newfoundland, and London Telegraph Company. 

" An attempt had been made to put a line of telegraph across New- 
foundland, on which some work had been done. Cyrus W. Field, 
Moses Taylor, Marshal O. Roberts, Wilson G. Hunt, and myself com- 
pleted that work across the island of Newfoundland, and then laid a cable 
across the Gulf of St. Lawrence, intending it as the beginning of a line 
from Europe to Amex-ica by telegraphic communication. After one form 
of diffiulty after another had been surmounted, we found that more than 
ten years had passed before we got a cent in return, and we had been 
spending money the whole time. We lost the first cable laid, which cost 
some three or four hundred thousand dollars, at the Gulf of St. Law- 
rence, which loss was occasioned by the seeming determination of the 
captain of the ship that towed our vessel across the Gulf to have his own 
way, in opposition to the directions of Mr. Buchanan, who directed him 
to keep a certain flag in sight as far as he could see it, in connection 
with a certain mark on the top of a mountain, which was visible nearly 
half way across the Gulf. 

" We had hired a vessel at seven hundred and fifty dollars a day, ami 
we directed the steamer Adger to go to Cane Ray, and tow the vessel 
across the Gulf, in order to lay the cable. We went to Port Basque, 
and found the vessel had not arrived. We accordingly anchored in 



9 

Port Basque until she did arrive, which was two days later. On her 
arrival, the captain was directed to take our vessel in tow, and carry 
her up to Cape Ray, where we had already prepared a telegraph house, 
from which to commence laying the cable. On this telegraph house we 
placed a flag-staff, which was to be kept in line by the steamer, as she 
crossed the Gulf, with a certain very excellent landmark on the top of 
a mountain some three, four, or five miles distant — a landmark which 
seemed to be made on purpose for our use. 

" We had an accident at starting. We joined the ends of the cable 
and brought one end into the telegraph house, and made everything 
ready to take the vessel in tow. The captain was then directed to 
bring his steamer in line, take the vessel in tow, and carry her across 
the Gulf. In doing that he ran his steamer into the vessel, carried 
away her shrouds and quarter-rail, and almost ruined our enterprise 
the first thing, dragging the cable over the stern of the vessel with such 
force as to break the connection ; and we were obliged to cut the cable 
and splice it again. The captain of the steamer had failed entirely in 
trying to get hold of the vessel ; and after we had mended the cable, 
and got everything ready for a second attempt, he was again ordered to 
take the vessel in tow. We had provided ourselves with two large 
cables, two hundred feet long and four inches in diameter, as tow-lines, 
so as to be sure of having sufficient strength to tow the vessel in all 
kinds of weather; but the captain of the steamer so managed matters, 
in his second attempt to take the vessel in tow, as to get this cable en- 
tangled in the steamer's wheel, and he hallooed to the captain of the 
vessel to let his cable slip, in order to get this unentangled. At this, the 
captain of the vessel let go his cable and lost his anchor and one of 
our big cables, for we had to cut it, in order to disentangle it from the 
wheel. After that was got loose thex - e was the vessel without an anchor, 
and she was going rapidly down upon a reef of rocks, with a strong wind 
against her. It was only with the greatest difficulty that we could get 
the captain of the Adger to go to her relief, and save her from being 
dashed on the rocks, with her forty men on board. We had to expos- 
tulate with the captain of the steamer until the vessel was within two ' 
or three hundred feet of the rocks, before he would consent to attempt 
her rescue ; and by the merest good luck, we got out a rope to her and 
saved her from going on the rocks, when she was so close to the shore 
that we could almost have thrown a line there. 

" The captain of th%s+eamer, however, got hold of the vessel at last, 
and brought her back tocher place in the harbor, where we had to re- 
new the connection of our cable, and prepare again to start. 



10 

" The third attempt to take hold of the vessel was successful, and on a 
beautiful'moming we started to lay the cable across the Gulf. 

" In a very little while I discovered that we were getting out of line 
with the marks that the captain had been directed to steer by. As 
President of the line, I called the matter to the attention of the captain. 
The answer I got was : ' I know how to steer my ship ; I steer by my 
compass.' It went on a little while longer, and finding that be was 
still going farther out of the line, I called his attention to the fact 
again, and so on, again and again, for some time, until he had got some 
eight or ten miles out of the line. I then said to him, ' Captain, 
we shall have to hold you responsible for the loss of this cable ! ' We 
got a lawyer on board to draw up a paper to present to him, stating 
that we should hold him responsible for the loss of the cable, as he had 
not obeyed the orders of Mr. Buchanan, as agreed on. After we had 
served this paper upon him, he turned the course of his ship, and went 
just as far from the line in the other direction. He had also agreed 
not to let his vessel go more than a mile and a half an hour, as it was 
impossible, under the circumstances, to pay out the cable faster than a 
mile and a half an hour. It was discovered, however, that he was run- 
ning his vessel faster and faster, while Mr. Buchanan hallooed, 
' Slower ! slower ! ' until finally the captain got a kink in the cable, 
and was obliged to stop. This happened several times. 

" So much delay took place that when it was late in the afternoon, we 
had not laid over forty miles of the cable out of the eighty miles that 
we had to go in crossing the Gulf. Then a very severe gale came up, 
and raged with such violence that the steamer Victoria, which was a 
small one, came near being swamped ; and in order to save that vessel, 
and the forty men on board of her, we were compelled to cut the cable. 

" Subsequently, we sent a vessel to take up that part of the cable ; 
and it was then found that we had payed out twenty- four miles of cable, 
and had gone only nine miles from shore ! We had spent so much 
money, and lost so much time, that it was very vexatious to us to have 
our enterprise defeated in the way it was, by the stupidity and obsti- 
nacy of one man. This man was one of the rebels that fired the first 
guns upon Fort Sumter. The poor fellow is now dead. 

u Having lost this cable, we ordered another, and had it ready in a 
year or two. This time we had a good man to put it down, and we 
had no trouble with it. 

" The great question then came up : What could we do about an ocean 
cable? After getting a few subscriptions here, which did not amount 
to much, we sent Mr. Field across the ocean, to see if he could get the 



11 

balance of the subscriptions in England ; and he succeeded, to the 
astonishment of almost everybody, because we had been set down as 
crazy people, spending our money as if it had been water. Mr. Field 
succeeded in getting the amount wanted, and in contracting for a cable. 
It was put on two ships which were to meet in mid-ocean. They did 
meet, joined the two ends of the cable, and laid it down successfully. 
"We brought our end to Newfoundland, where we received over it some 
four hundred messages. • Very soon after it started, however, we found 
it began to fail, and it grew weaker and weaker, until at length it could 
not be understood any more. 

" It so happened that the few messages that we received over the cable 
were important to the English Government, for it had arranged to trans- 
port a large number of soldiers from Canada to China, in the war with 
the Chinese, and just before the transports were to make sail a telegram 
came stating that peace was declared. This inspired the people of 
England with confidence in our final success. This occurred j ust before 
the Crystal Palace burned down, and we had a meeting in the Crystal 
Palace to celebrate the great triumph of having received and sent 
messages across the ocean. .Our triumph was short-lived, for it was 
only a few days after that the cable had so weakened in transmitting 
that it could no longer be understood. 

" One-half the people did not now believe that we had ever had any 
messages across the cable. It was all a humbug, they thought. In the 
Chamber of Commerce the question came up about a telegraph line, and 
a man got up and said : ' It is all a humbug ! No message ever came 
over ! ' At that, Mr. Cunard arose, and said that ' the gentleman did 
not know what he was talking about f and had no right to say what he 
had, and that he himself had sent messages and got the answers.' 

" Mr. Cunard was a positive witness ; he had been on the spot ; and 
the man must have felt ' slim ' at the result of his attempt to cast 
ridicule on men whose efforts, if unsuccessful, were at least not un- 
worthy of praise. 

11 We succeeded in getting another cable, but when we had got it about 
half-way over, we lost that as well. Then the question seemed hope- 
less. We thought for a long time that our money was all lost. The 
matter rested some two years before anything more was done. My 
friend Mr. Wilson G. Hunt, used to talk to me often about it ; for we 
had brought him into the Board some two or three years before. He 
said he did not feel much interest in it, but he felt concerned about 
spending so much money ; and he remarked that he was not sure, as 
we had spent so much money already about the telegraph line, but that 



12 

we had better spend a little more. So we sent Mr. Field out again. 
We bad spent so much money already, it was ' like pulling teeth' out of 
Roberts and Taylor to get more money from them ; but we got up the 
sum necessary to send Mr. Field out. 

"When he arrived there, Mr. Field said they laughed at him for 
thinking of getting up another cable. Tbey said that they thought the 
thing was dead enough, and buried deep enough in the ocean to satisfy 
anybody. But Mr. Field was not satisfied. Finally he got hold 
of an old Quaker friend, who was a very rich man, and he so com- 
pletely electrified him with the idea of the work, that he put three or 
four hundred thousand dollars into it immediately to lay another cable, 
and in fourteen days after Mr. Field had got that man's name, he had 
the whole amount of subscriptions made up, six millions of dollars. 

" The cable was made and put down, and it worked successfully. We 
then went out to see if we could not pick up the other one. The 
balance of the lost cable was on board the ship. The cable was found, 
picked up, and joined to the rest — and this wonder of the world was 
accomplished. I do not think that feat is surpassed by any other 
human achievement. The cable was taken out of water, two and a half 
miles deep, in mid-ocean. It was pulled up three times, before it was 
saved. They got it up just far enough to see it, and it would go down 
again, and they would have to do the work over again. They used up 
all their coal, and spent ten or twelve days in ' hooking ' for the cable 
before it was finally caught. But they succeeded ; the two ends of 
the cable were brought in connection, and then we had two complete 
cables acros3 the ocean. 

u In taking up the first cable the cause of the failure was discovered. 
It originated in the manufacture of the cable. In passing the cable 
into the vat provided for it, where it was intended to He under water 
all the time, until put aboard the ship, the workmen neglected to keep 
the water at all times over the cable ; and on one occasion, when the 
sun shone very hotly down into this vat where the cable was lying un- 
covered, its- rays melted the gutta percha, so that the copper wire 
inside, sunk down against the outer covering. I have a piece of the 
cable which shows just how it occurred. The first cable that was laid 
would have been a perfect success, if it had not been for that error in 
manufacturing it. The copper wire sagged down against the outside 
covering, and there was just a thin layer of gutta percha to prevent it 
from coming in contact with the. water. In building the first cables 
their philosophy was not so well understood as it is now ; and so, when 
the cable began to fail, they increased the power of the battery ; and it 



13 

is supposed that a spark of the electricity came in contact with water, 
and the electricity passed off into the water. 

"After the two ocean cables had been laid successfully, it was found 
necessary to have a second cable across the Gulf of St. Lawrence. 
Our delays had been so trying and unfortunate in the past, that none 
of the stockholders, with the exception of Mr. Field, Mr. Taylor, Mr. 
Roberts, and myself, would take any interest in the matter. We had 
to get the money by offering bonds, which we had power to do by 
charter; and these were offered at fifty cents on the dollar. Mr. Field, 
Mr. Roberts, Mr. Taylor, and myself were compelled to take up the 
principal part of the stock at that rate, in order to get the necessary 
funds. We had to do the business through the Bank of Newfoundland, 
and the bank would not trust the company, but drew personally on me. 
I told them to draw on the company, but they continued to draw on 
me, and I had to pay the drafts or let them go back protested. I was 
often out ten or twenty thousand dollars in advance, in that way, to 
keep the thing going. After the cable became a success, the stock rose 
to ninety dollars per share, at which figure we sold out to an English 
company. That proved to be the means of saving us from loss. The 
work was finished at last, and I never have regretted it, although it was 
a terrible time to go through. 



1 



CHAPTER II. 

THE INVENTIVE LITE AND ENTERPRISES OF MR, COOPER. 

Mr. Cooper's mind is not one of great invention, but a mind of great 
contrivance. He lacks the elementary training in the principles of me- 
chanics and constructive drawing, which accurately guide the mind 
through the labyrinths of great inventions, and lead it safely to the 
end. In truth, most inventions, so called, are mere contrivances for 
the improved application of old inventions. 

Mr. Cooper's sound good sense and practical knowledge have always 
directed his invention to some immediate useful result connected with 
his own private business, or some object of public interest. But, on 
the whole, he has met with more than the average degree of success of 
" those who make many inventions." 

As this is a sort of " autobiography written by another," we will 
give a brief account of some of these inventions and contrivances of 
Mr. Cooper, as obtained from him in conversation. They certainly 
exhibit a thoroughly American mind, full of expedients and inventive 
resources for making the most of what God and nature put into his 
hands. Some of Mr. Cooper's important inventions have already been 
mentioned as part of his business life. 

Mr. Cooper says : " I very early took to making and contriving for 
myself or friends. I remember one of the earliest things I undertook, 
of my own accord, was to make a pair of shoes. For this purpose I 
first obtained an old pair, and took them all apart to see the structure ; 
and then, procuring leather, thread, needles, and some suitable tools, 
without further instruction, I made the last and a pair of shoes, which 
compared very well with the country shoes then in vogue." 

" "When I was an apprentice to the business of carriage-making, I 
spent all my spare time in ornamental carving in an upper room which 
rr y grandmother gave me for this purpose, on Broadway. This was 
my occupation, instead of walking the streets or going to places of pub- 
lic resort, as other apprentices of my age. I made for my employer at 
that time, a machine for mortising the hubs of wheels, which proved 
very profitable to him, and induced him afterwards to offer to set me 
up in the business of carriage-making. 



15 



THE TIDE-WATER USED AS A POWEB. 



" When I was an apprentice at the coach-making business I planned 
out and made at night a model machine to show how power could 
be obtained from the natural current of the tide, and be applied to 
various useful purposes. My model represented a plan for causing the 
water-wheel to rise and fall with the tide, at any desired speed, by the 
action of its own machinery. It was so arranged that the whole power 
could be thrown on a saw-mill or be made to force compressed air into 
a reservoir, to be used as a motive power to propel ferry-boats across 
the river. This was to be done by making the hull of a ferry-boat to 
consist of two strong iron cylinders, to form the buoyancy of the boat, 
and a reservoir of power to drive a boat across the river. On these 
cylinders, I placed, at a sufficient distance apart to receive the water or 
driving-wheel, either between the cylinders or on the outside, as might 
be thought most convenient, the deck to rest on and be fastened to 
these cylinders or reservoirs for power. 

" The power was to be received from a reservoir of compressed air on 
the dock, by connecting the hull of the boat with the reservoir by means 
of a flexible tube, when in the dock, at every trip. The air to be worked 
off by its expansion and pressure, similar to the working of a steam- 
engine. 

" The wreck of the old tide-mill is still in the garret of my house. 

" I remember that Fulton did me the honor to come and see my model 
and machinery, but he was too much occupied at that time with his own 
plans of steamboat navigation, to pay much attention to my invention." 

ROTARY MOTION OBTAINED FROM RECTILINEAR ALTERNATING MOTION, 
WITHOUT A CRANK. 

" I had read from the books, or heard said, that there was no loss of 
power communicated through a crank, except from friction. I doubted 
this. There are two ' dead points ' in the crank motion, which nothing 
but the inertia of a fly-wheel or something equivalent, can overcome. I 
made an experiment to show that the rectilinear motion of a piston-rod 
could produce the rotary motion of an axle with less loss of power 
than through a crank. 

" By special contrivance, I made my piston-rod a part of the circuit of 
an endless chain, which went around the circumference of a driving- 
wheel, and communicated power without any crank. It would be 
difficult to describe this machine without drawings, but the result was 



16 

that I proved to the satisfaction of the City Engineer, against his former 
convictions, that there was a loss of power in the use of the crank, and 
I gained, with my application of the reciprocal and rectilinear motion of 
the piston-rod, a power which was as five to eight over the crank. 

" I made a small engine on this principle, and used it in the ' first 
locomotive,' which I have spoken of before, on the Ohio and Baltimore 
Railroad, making a trial trip with the President alone. But before I 
came to try it with the train of cars, it was so unskilfully handled by 
some meddlesome person that it broke twice, and I was obliged, at last, 
in that experiment, to put a cross-head and crank on the engine. I have 
the remains of that first model of the engine in my garret yet." 

A METHOD OF PROPULSION ON THE ERIE CANAL. 

Mr. Cooper said : " Fifty-three years ago, a year before the water was 
let into the Erie canal, it occurred to me that canal-boats might be pro- 
pelled by the force of water drawn from a higher level, and made to 
move a series of endless chains along the course of the canal. So I began 
to make experiments. I built a flat-bottomed scow, took a couple of 
men, and choosing that part of the East River that lies between what is 
now the foot of Eighth street and where Bellevue Hospital now stands 
— a distance of one mile — I drove posts into the mud, one hundred feet 
apart. On these posts I fastened rollers made of block tin and zinc, on 
which my endless chain could run. There were two rollers on each post, 
one above the other, so that the chain could run up on one roller and 
back on the other. Then I made two miles of chain. Here is a piece 
of it now." 

The old gentleman took from the drawer three or four links of the 
chain, rusty with age. They were of large iron wire,.each link about 
five inches long, rudely twisted together, something like a surveyor's 
chain. 

" This chain is of four-horse power," continued Mr. Cooper. " I tested 
it. I then arranged a water-wheel to run the chain. This pi*eparation 
took a deal of time, for I did most of the work myself. When it was 
completed, I took a small skiff, fastened my tow line to the chain, started 
my wheel, and found that the experiment was a success. I invited Gov. 
Clinton and a few other gentlemen to make a trip. We ran the two- 
miles, up and back, in eleven minutes. The_ Governor was so well 
pleased that he paid me eight hundred dollars for the privilege of pur- 
chasing the patent right for the use of the canal. 

" It was never used on the canal, and for this reason : Gov. Clinton 



17 

had great difficulty in getting the farmers on the line of the canal to 
give him the right of way, and in order to induce them to grant it had 
held out to them the great advantages that would arise to them of sell- 
ing their oats, com, hay, and other produce to the canal men for the 
use of the horses. If the endless chain was used, these promises would 
be good for nothing, as there would he no horses to feed. So Gov. Clin- 
ton gave up- my scheme. I ran the chain on the river for ten days, 
during which time hundreds of people made the trip. At the end of 
that time I took the chain off the river. Well, the matter stood still 
until a few years ago Mr. Weltch, the President of the Camden and 
Amboy Canal Company, hit upon the endless chain plan for getting his 
boats through the locks. He tried it, and it worked well. So he went 
to Washington to take out a patent, and found on searching the records 
that I had taken out a p*atent on the very same invention, fifty years 
before. Of course my patent had run out, so the invention was free to 
all." 

MECHANICAL TRANSPORTATION BY THE FORCE OF GRAVITY. 

Mr. Cooper has often resorted to his contrivance in saving the 
expense of labor, when labor was both scarce and dear. Two instances 
of his ingenuity are thus related by himself : 

" It is about twelve years since I made an endless band of round iron, 
near three-eighths of an inch in diameter, extending in the form of a 
belt for about three miles, for the purpose of transporting coal from the 
mines to my furnaces. This belt of iron was supported on wheels 
fastened to posts, the wheels having grooved surfaces to support the 
belt. On this belt I fastened buckets formed to receive iron ore. 
These buckets, when filled with ore, were on a descending grade suffi- 
cient to carry the ore down and return the empty buckets. 

" During the time I owned the Canton property, I made a belt of cars 
which I placed on a double track railroad. One track was held right 
over the other in a frame for the purpose. The belt of cars was placed 
on a double track railroad in this framework, and was intended to 
transport by its own weight, a sand-bank into Harris Creek bottom, 
which I desired then to fill up. The framework with its rails and belt 
of cars, was placed on longitudinal sleepers, so as to be moved up to the 
Bide of the bank, as the sand was being removed. The sand could be 
carelessly thrown into a long hopper, over the cars, on the upper track. 
The cars, after dumping their load at the lower end, returned on the 
lower track, bottom upwards, to be constantly refilled." 
2 ■ 



18 



THE TORPEDO VESSEL FOR THE GREEKS. 

The only " bloody-minded thing " that Mr. Cooper ever made was a 
torpedo-boat, designed to blow the Turks out of water, for their 
inhuman cruelties to the Greeks, in the struggle to regain their free- 
dom. This was about 1824 or 1825. 

Mr. Cooper relates, with some mivthfulness, how he was " perfectly 
indignant" at the conduct of the Turks, and had his " sympathies, in 
common with many of his fellow-citizens, greatly excited in behalf of 
the struggling Greeks ; " so he determined to take up their cause in a 
very destructive way. " I planned a torpedo-boat, which might be 
sent from shore, or from a vessel towards an enemy's ship six or eight 
miles off. The torpedo-boat was to be propelled by a screw and a 
steam-engine, and guided and directed towards its object by a couple of 
steel wires six or eight miles long, unwound from a suitable reel, and 
adjusted to the steering apparatus of the boat. I tried these wires first 
on a small steamer that I directed in the Harbor, near the Narrows, 
and they woi'ked very well for six miles, until another boat came across 
my wires and broke them. When ready for service, I designed to 
place red-hot cannon balls in the boiler of my engine, to furnish the 
steam. The torpedo being placed on a bent piece of iron projecting far 
from the bow of my boat, when it struck the enemy the shock would 
explode the torpedo and bend the piece of iron, and by a proper contri- 
vance reverse the action of the engine, and send the boat back again, 
guided and directed by the wires. I was preparing this torpedo-boat 
to go with the ship which our citizens were about to send, with provi- 
sions, clothing, and medicines, to the unfortunate victims of the Turk- 
ish war, and I designed it to be the " bitterest pill " in the whole cargo ; 
b\it unfortunately, 1 did not get it ready in time, and it was soon after 
burned up in my factory, with all the rest of the contents." 

THE MUSICAL, MECHANICAL ROCKING-CRADLE. 

Mr. Cooper was always very kind and indulgent in his domestic 
relations, and delighted in the society of his wife and children. He 
says, " In early life, when I was first married, I found it necessary to 
' rock the cradle,' while my wife prepared our frugal meals. This was 
not always convenient, in my busy life, and I conceived the idea of 
making a cradle that would be made to rock by a mechanism. I did 
so, and enlargiug upon my first idea, I arranged the mechanism for 
keeping off the flies, and playing a music-box for the amusement of the 



19 

baby ! This cradle was bought of me afterwards, by a delighted pedlar, 
who gave me his ' whole stock in trade ' for the exchange and the privi- 
lege of selling the patent in the State of Connecticut." 

MR*. COOPER'S WIFE AND FAMILY. 

Here we will say a few words with regard to Mr. Cooper's wife and 
family relations. 

Mr. Cooper married Miss Sarah Bedel, of Hempstead, Long Island, 
in December, 1813, being then twenty-two years old, and his wife in her 
twenty-first year. They had six children, four of whom died in 
childhood. The two children surviving are Edward Cooper, of the firm 
of Cooper & Hewitt, merchants in New York city ; and Mrs. Sarah 
Amelia Hewitt, wife of the Hon. A. S. Hewitt, Member of Congress. 

Mrs. Cooper died in the seventy-seventh year of her age, and on the 
fifty-sixth anniversary of her wedding day, December, 1869. 

Mr. Cooper never speaks of his wife without emotion. He attributes 
all his highest happiness, and most of his success in life, to the sterling 
qualities of character in his wife. He says, she was the " day star, the 
solace and the inspiration of his life," — words that express a deep feel- 
ing, and also a substantial fact ; for there is no doubt, from the char- 
acter given her by others, that she was a woman of superior moral 
qualities, and had precisely that fitness and training that made a worthy 
and most efficient " help-mate " of Mr. Cooper. Certain it is, that her 
position, was one of no secondary importance in Mr. Cooper's life and 
the development of his character. We give, therefore, a few extracts 
from Dr. Bellows' sermon at her funeral services, which, though in 
stately language, gives a fine and -truthful analysis of the character of 
Mrs. Cooper. • 

" Born in respectable circumstances, of honest blood, reared to in- 
dustry and self-denial, her providential lot united her at an early period 
to the husband whose blessed companion she has been for more than 
half a century. His toils and anxieties she shared during the long, 
patient, persistent struggle with the difficulties that always beset self- 
made fortune and self-made men and women ; his home she ordered and 
brightened, and enriched with her native industry, fidelity, and cheer- 
fulness ; his judgment she steadied by her weighty good sense ; his 
prosperity she helped to keep modest and unpretending ; his beneficence 
proceeded in no small part from the results of her prudence and economy, 
and from the fixed habit of serviceableness to others, which had its 



20 

root in her essential goodness of heart, but was confirmed by practice, 
enlightened by experience, and perfected by religious principle*. 

" God alone can sum up and estimate the value of a life characteris tic- 
ally unselfish from beginning to end, in which, to human observation, 
every throb of the heart has been in the interest of virtue and goodness. 
Who but He can measure the worth of nearly eighty years of spotless 
fidelity to truth and ceaseless devotion to duty — each year, each month, 
each day, each hour, recording its noiseless act of self-control, forbear- 
ance with others, training and counsel for children, sympathy and sup- 
port for husband and friend ; action, solicitude for sorrowing, sick, and 
tempted neighbors ; steady provision for the pleasure and profit of 
humble dependents ; a hand open to its fullest extent, and a heart 
tender and full of sincere charity and peace with all the world. 

" Strife and discontent, disorder and murmurs, could not live long in 
her gentle presence. Like sunshine in a shady place, she banished the 
damps of worldly care and the poisonous dews of envy and jealousy. 
Her household gathered around her as we gather from the winter's 
cold about the genial fireside. Her generous, outgrowing heart and 
ready love melted the frosts of custom and the snows of formality and 
all the icicles of glittering pride away. It was impossible to be arti- 
ficial, false, pretentious in her sincere and simple presence. And how 
full and steady and strong the love she gave and drew towards her ! 
To-day, the fifty-sixth anniversary of her wedding, her honored husband 
could testify that age had done nothing, to the last, to weaken the 
fervor — nay, hardly to diminish the romance of the union which had 
been blessed with unbroken peace, with uninterrupted confidence, with 
steady delight in each other's companionship ; and what an inheritance 
do not her surviving children possess in the memory of such a devoted, 
faithful, and exemplary mother ! 

" Nor was this sweetness and goodness the fruit of constitutional 
amiability merely. Without that, indeed, her character could not have 
been what it was ; but without something besides, it would certainly 
have lacked the wisdom and judgment, the prudence and self-restraint 
that marked her beneficence. She was no careless and sentimental 
almoner, hushing the sensitiveness of her own aching pity by ministering 
indiscriminately to the cries of idleness, imposture, and vice. She had 
known too well herself the discipline of honest toil, the uses of a self- 
denying economy, not to feel a strong disapprobation for sloth and 
self-indulgence. Nor was poverty in her experience such an unmiti- 
gated misfortune as to be treated with hasty and demoralizing lar- 



21 

gesses. She set no such valuation upon superfluity and luxury as to pity 
excessively those who taxed them. Her charities, constant and numer- 
ous, were painstaking, thoughtful, considerate. She gave as nmch 
counsel as money and as much time as means to this responsible office 
— one of the most serious and difficult of all Christian duties — the pru- 
dent, wise exercise of charity. If all the hearts here present could tell 
their own experience of her patient, wise, and prudent beneficence, it 
would fill these courts with the frankincense of honest gratitude and 
merited praise ! 

" You behold here no feeble relic of dainty idleness and unstrung 
fibres and soft and tended weakness. Here is what is left of a frame 
that has used every nerve and tissue in human service, household cares, 
diligent and painstaking duty to husband, children, and dependants. 
Here are the ashes of a woman of the Puritan and Huguenot spirit 
— one who knew nothing about the modern discontent with woman's 
sphere ; nothing about the weariness of leisure and the lack of adequate 
occupation; nothing about the inequality of her woman's lot, or the 
monotony and oppression of a wife's and mother's duties. She found 
the place Providence gave her large enough for all her gifts, tasking and 
rewarding to all her efforts, and slje did her full part in making, keep- 
ing, and spending her husband's fortune." 

CONCLUSION. 

Mr. Cooper's strong points of character are an impregnable sense of 
justice; an all-embracing philanthropy, and a keen instinct and wise 
discernment for the truth ; especially in absolute and simple forms, such 
as it appears in the sayings of Christ, and in the maxims of the wise 
and good of all ages. He believes in these great truths with a simple 
heartiness and childlike fervor that makes it hard for him to realize 
at times that all men do not recognize them, or, if they do, they will 
not yield implicit obedience. They are no " glittering generalities " to 
him. He has faith in these simple maxims of wisdom and goodness, 
and he brings all institutions and methods of government to the test of 
their universal application. He is the most tolerant of men towards 
the frailties and shortcomings of individuals, but turns a stern face 
towards classes intrenched in privilege, and monopolies of all kinds. 
Without the discipline of the schools, without a systematic education, 
or special training of any kind derived from others, he has trained him- 
self in the school of life to a large measure of practical and general 
knowledge, and acquired a specific skill, in a certain number of occupa- 



22 

tions during his long life, which could only be the result of great in- 
dustry and devotion to his business occupations, sagacity in discerning 
their best conditions, and a marvellous facility in achieving success 
under difficulties, or of turning his course when success was not to be 
obtained any longer. His simple truthfulness makes him credulous, at 
times, in the honesty of some men who wish to deceive him ; but he is 
never deceived long ; and they rarely come off with any great advantage . 
gained at his expense. With great energy, industry, economy, and a 
certain strictness in bargaining, which belongs to all acquisitive and ac- 
cumulative natures, he has acquired a large fortune ; but, outside of 
business, Mr. Cooper is as approachable, simple, and gentle as a child. 
He is open-handed to the poor and the destitute, melted by every tale of 
sorrow that is preferred to his ear ; and lets thousands slip from his boun- 
tiful hand without a thought but of the good he designs. His character 
is based on sturdy honesty, impregnable justice, and common sense, 
with a something besides — a wonderful and rare nature that lies behind 
all his ordinary practical life among men, made up of ideal thoughts, 
inexpressible sympathies, and a great yearning for the morally good and 
the beautiful, that leads him sometimes into high regions of specula- 
tion, where practical men think that they cannot follow. But whoever 
studies these speculations of Mr. Cooper for the welfare of the race, or 
of his country, will see a germ of practical principles in them, a solid 
ground of wisdom on which they rest ; so that if he had opportunities 
and adequate means to realize them, such as fall into the hands of the 
rulers of nations, he would turn his speculations into facts in the life 
of the nation. His ingenuity and his practical invention have been 
proved time and again ; but he has also a certain speculative idealism 
in invention that has sometimes outrun his means and his practical 
ability to realize ; but never without a sound principle at the bottom 
of his invention, which needed only more fortunate and favorable con- 
ditions than he could command. 

Mi\ Cooper is so broad, sincere, and catholic in his religious prin- 
ciples, that, I believe, he would be recognized by any minister of the 
Christian religion as a truly religious man ; but his ecclesiasticism ends 
with a simple respect for all churches. 

Mr. Cooper has all his life been devoted to business, but from an 
early period he has taken a personal interest and an active jiart in all 
the educational, social, and industrial progress of his native city, and 
often contributed in money and personal effort, very valuable services. 
He is by nature and temperament a radical reformer, but abhors destruc- 
tiveness ; so that he always looks to building up, before he thinks of 



23 

pulling down. He respects vested rights and legal forms, even when he 
thinks they are opposed to the general welfare ; and he will not consent 
to have them abolished without compensation to the losers. 

The " crowning glory " of Mr. Cooper's life, and that on' which he 
has expended the most money, time, and thought, is the " Cooper 
Union," commonly called the " Cooper Institute." 

The corner-stone of this institution was laid twenty- one years ago, 
at the junction of Third and Fourth avenues, and their crossing with 
Eighth street. The original cost of the building was $634,000. It is 
in the centre of the industrial and trading population of New York, 
who are thus placed within easy reach of facilities chiefly designed for 
them. The institution consists of a series of free schools of instruction 
in practical art and science, a free reading-room, and free courses of 
popular lectures on subjects of science, art, and social reform. About 
twenty professors and instructors are employed and over fifty thousand 
dollars a year expended. 

He is especially strenuous for a civil reform, and a " civil service " 
that shall secure to the country a qualified, honest, and permanent set 
of civil officers, educated to their special duties as are our military and 
naval officers. They should be examined and appointed by competent 
and permanent commissioners in every State, elected, or appointed irre- 
spective of their politics. Politics should be confined to the electoral 
offices of the General Government, as they shape what is called the 
" policy of the Government." These civil officers, when they have worn 
out their powers in the service of the Government, he thinks should be 
pensioned, as are the military and naval officers. 

These are the principles which Mr. Cooper sincerely entertains and 
has striven to idealize all his life. Whether they are worthy the suffrages 
of the American people, let the people themselves judge. Mr. Cooper 
has never sought office, the office has sought him. Mr. Cooper is now 
in his eighty-seventh year, but hale and hearty beyond his years. He is 
especially young in that " youth of the heart " which gives the " verdure 
ever fresh " to life. Simple and pure in all his living, regular in his 
habits, active all the day, a sound sleeper at night, a man that lives 
much in " gentle mirth," lie bids fair to live much beyond the term of 
ordinary life. He loves " the world," but hates the " flesh and the 
Devil." With a plain exterior, and without what is called " culture," 
he is every way a true gentleman — affable to his friends, kind to his 
dependants, full of respect and regard for woman, tender towards chil- 
dren, generous and sympathetic for the poor and the suffering, denying 
himself, and princely in his gifts to the world. 



24 

Mr. Cooper has written, or caused to be written under his super, 
vision, a number of letters and pamphlets, the design of which has 
been to throw light upon the political questions of the day. They 
breathe his spirit and thought throughout, though not always in his 
own form of expression. Mr. Cooper has never been educated to 
composition as an art, nor is he familiar with those rhetorical forms of 
expression that grapple with difficult and abstract subjects, and give 
them thorough development and statement. His style is conversational 
and simple, and deals only with the simplest but grandest form of 
thought, where logic is at no account, and rhetoric of little avail. 
Hence, he has often intrusted to others the expression of his thought, 
for purposes of discussing a subject, and presenting it in proper form. 
But he always reads, carefully and conscientiously, whatever he causes 
to be written, and allows nothing to go forth to the public that is not 
properly and substantially the product of his own mind and the dictate 
of his best judgment. 

In the following letters and public addresses of Mr. Cooper, we have 

his most carefully considered opinions and his own real sentiments, 

carefully written under his constant supervision and revision. 

Editor. 
New York, Sept, lsfc, 1877, 



THE 

NOMINATION TO THE PRESIDENCY 

OF 

PETER COOPER, 

AND HIS 

ADDRESS TO THE INDIANAPOLIS CONVENTION 

OF THE 

NATIONAL INDEPENDENT PARTY. 



INTRODUCTION. 



Mr. Cooper's political ideas are very simple, and consist of twc 
fundamental principles and their application to national life and hap- 
piness. 

First, the independence of a nation must be secured from all foreign 
dictation, interference, or even undue influence, in its political and civil 
life and in its industrial business and financial interests. 

Secondly, in domestic administration, " equal rights to all " should 
prevail— iJolitical, social, and industrials-^ necessary to the "preserva- 
tion of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." 

These two fundamental principles, he thinks, are far from having 
been achieved in the history of nations.. 

The struggle for national life and happiness, now going on, consists 
in the vindication and practical application of the two principles of 
foreign independence and domestic rights. " Peace on earth and good- 
will towards men " can only be obtained when nations cease to war on 
each other, in any way, and communities recognize and enforce equal 
rights for individuals. But Mr. Cooper recognizes the fact that, 
although nations may not be actually at war with each other, at some 
times, there is a quasi war, a state of hostility of " interests, but ill un- 
derstood," a commercial and financial war going on, all the time, between 

nations. 

The same is the fact in the domestic history of nations. Actual 
rebellions and revolutions result from a policy of hostility between the 
different classes that may divide the nation; but if these are not in 
progress, there is still going on, all the time, a quasi war of " interests 
but ill understood," between individuals and classes, that results in 
monopolies and unequal rights of all kinds. 

To protect the people from this silent and selfish aggression of foreign 
influence, Mr. Cooper believes in a protective tariff, and a domestic 
currency incapable of exportation. 

He believes that a tariff is really a tax on the foreign manufacturer 



and importer, and not on the domestic buyer, as it is usually represented 
by the sophistical argument of free trade. So far from making goods 
dearer than they could otherwise be, the competitions of foreign trade 
and the necessities of selling somewhere, make the foreign importer and 
manufacturer submit to the tariff, as a tax on their goods, while the 
practical result is an enhanced price, relatively, of all domestic manufac- 
tures and native products that are exchanged for the foreign goods. 
Any one may convince himself, by inquiring from domestic dealers in 
foreign goods, that the prices they have to give to the foreigner are 
rarely increased by a tariff on the importation ; hence, the price is not 
increased to the consumer. All the complaints on the subject of tarif! 
come from the foreigu manufacturer and the large importing merchants, 
and from those who do not 'understand the true working of a tariff. 
The tariff is a premium to the domestic manufacturer, but no additional 
tax on the consumer, who from the very start buys his goods just as 
cheap from the foreigner, and in the long run a great deal cheaper from 
the domestic manufacturer. Mr. Cooper believes that the nearer the 
consumer is to the producer, the better for both ; that the greatest 
diversity of production is the indispensable condition of the highest 
prosperity, independence, and the intellectual and moral advancement 
of any people. For this purpose, a "judicious tariff for revenue and 
protection " is absolutely necessary. It taxes the foreigner only ; it en- 
courages and diversifies our own domestic labor, and puts a premium on 
it, and frees the whole nation from the dependence upon and consequent 
tyranny of foreign nations. 

For the same object of commercial protection, Mr. Cooper desires a 
purely domestic currency, unexportable as merchandise, like gold and 
silver, and incapable of interference by the demands and exactions 
of foreign trade. Every nation ought to have such a domestic cur- 
rency, and keep it " on a par " with the currency of all other nations, 
by the reciprocities and " equal balances " of their mutual exchanges in 
each other's products and manufactures. It is axiomatic that the money 
of a creditor nation will always be " above par " with that of a debtor na- 
tion. If, therefore, the money of a debtor nation can be exported, aa 
gold and silver, it will flow out to the creditor nation, and leave the 
debtor in distress and business embarrassment, till its money can be 
drawn back by sacrifices of domestic goods and products. This export 
able currency gives a " fatal facility " of getting in debt with foreign 
nations. Instead of paying with goods and products, our only proper 
resource, we pay with our money, which we cannot spare from our own 
domestic trade and the payment of labor. The periodical "panics " 



have always resulted from a " drain of specie," when that was our only 
legal tender. No device or enactment of Government can prevent 
this ; because it cannot control the price of money, when money is also 
merchandise all over the world, as is also gold and silver. Hence the 
Government cannot protect the people from periodic disaster and dis- 
tress to the domestic trade, and the stoppage of the bread of the poor ; 
from the extravagance of the rich of our own nation, in foreign goods, 
and the insidious temptations to trade in the cheap labor of other na- 
tions. To make our domestic currency on a par with gold or silver, or 
any foreign currency, Mr. Cooper thinks, our Government should make 
it of the most indispensable use as legal tender for all debts and Gov- 
ernment dues ; fix its price, equitably, by the interest paid on it, 
when converted into bonds, prevent over-issues by strict and just regu- 
lations as to the issue of bonds or currency, and let the people them- 
selves always regulate the relative amount of each, by the " intercon- 
vertible bond." 

The tariff and the " domestic currency," are the two great means of 
defence which Mr. Cooper sets up against the " war of commerce," 
which all nations are now urging against each other, amidst the reci- 
procities, the fair exchanges, and the civilizing intercourse which a true 
commerce and trade engender among nations. 

He has no objection to gold and silver coin taing also a "legal 
tender," as well as paper. It is so in France. The objection that "it 
will set up three standards for the payment of debts," and the injustice 
to the creditor by the fluctuations in value of either standard, is more 
than met by the fact that gold and silver, as the present money of the 
world, do not fluctuate much, except as the currents of the world's com- 
merce ebb and flow ; and this cannot be controlled by Government, but 
must be guarded against by a domestic paper currency, from leaving us 
with too little money at any time to do business with ; while the paper can 
be made of stable value by proper Government regulation and the " in- 
terconvertible bond." Making gold and silver coin a legal tender will 
tend to enhance their value among us, encourage the production of gold 
and silver, in which the country is very rich, and equalize our ex- 
changes with foreign nations more, by furnishing them what they now 
desire the most, in exchange for their commodities.* 

So far from giving occasion and instruments to the selfishness, or 
greed, or love of power of individuals and classes, Government is espe- 

* Mr. Cooper thinks now that the Government paper should be the exclusivt 
legal tender ; and by keeping its volume at a certain fixed ratio, per capita, 
receivable for all taxes and duties, and made interconvertible with Government 
bonds, the paper could be kept on a par with the standard dollar of gold or silver. 



6 

sially constituted to keep an even balance among the rights of tin 
people, and not only protect their lives and property from the violence 
that springs from such passions, but from the cunning devices of law 
and vested privileges by which the few, often take away the rights of 
the many, or even the banding together, under cunning forms and pre- 
tences, of some one class, — politicians, bondholders, importers, bank- 
ers, or " syndicates and rings " of all kinds, to defraud and deceive the 
people. This is indeed a difficult task. This is the silent war going 
on at all times in a nation, which brings on, sooner or later, revolu- 
tions and rebellions, unless the differences can be allayed by reason, 
justice, and humanity, embodied in law, and faithfully administered by 
Government. This ought to be the proper object of all "parties " and 
administrations. But late events have shown that, while our form of 
Government is the best in the world, it is, in some respects, the worst 
administered. The rapid growth in wealth and the wonderful material 
resources that tempt the cupidity of this people, have got in advance of 
their moral and intellectual development, and engendered a venality 
and greed for wealth that has crept into the halls of legislation and 
into the courts of justice. Politics have become a trade for office, and 
the wealthy are turning their attention to politics, as means of mon- 
opoly and lucrative gain, greater than mere legitimate business alone 
can offer. This is indeed a sad sign of political decay and venal cor- 
ruption in public affairs, of which official peculations, such as the 
Tweeds and the Belknaps engage in, are the mere outcrops of what 
can be found deeper and more general under the surface. It is such 
convictions as these that are bringing honest men to the front^ 
who else, like Mi*. Cooper, would shrink from observation, and pre- 
fer private life to all the honors of public office. There is a sense of 
real danger pervading the honorable and good minds of this country, 
that our republic cannot last much longer if " this order of things " 
is allowed to go on ; that " something must be done to change the 
men and measures that now control public affairs, or we shall end 
in, revolution and despotism." What complicates the difficulty is, that 
under this very cry of reform, bad men are trying to get control of 
public affairs, from the free suffrages of the people. If the people can- 
not discriminate, or allow themselves to be deceived in this crisis of the 
nation's history, we must follow the precedent of other nations, under 
similar circumstances, and lose our liberties from similar causes. 

Mr. Cooper's mind has been so strongly impressed with this state of 
things, that at an advanced age, when he would gladly seek repose, but 
with a life of honorable toil and honest record behind him, never having 



sought office or political preferment in his life, he consented, at the earn- 
est solicitation of friends, to accept the nomination as chief magistrate of 
this nation in the spring of 1876. This is itself one of the signs of reaction 
in the people's mind against the ruling class. The people are suffering, 
and they have no hopes of amelioration from those who ask to administer 
the Government, but a continuance of the policy of administration to 
which they owe their sufferings. Mr. Cooper thinks this is " cruel and 
unjust." He demands an entire change in two particulars : First, in 
the financial policy of the government ; Secondly, in an organized " civil 
reform," both in the appointment and election to office, that shall secure 
the best and most competent men to rule and to serve this people. 

He thinks that " politicians " may have a place, and have a very 
useful function in the " body politic ; " but they must not be allowed 
to control the appointment of all the civil offices in the gift of the 
Government, and make them the "chess-men" in their game of public 
life, and the means of keeping themselves in power. 

Mr. Cooper also thoroughly believes in the paternal character and 
functions of every Republican Government. The general Government, 
in its sphere, and the local Governments, in their several spheres, in the 
States and municipalities, should have a paternal spirit and oversight 
towards the mass of the people. The poor and the maimed, the pau« 
per and the criminal, the unfortunate and the suffering who have no 
private relief or help, should be looked after and cared for by the local 
and municipal Governments. He believes that public improvements and 
works of a national character are proper objects of the general Govern- 
ment ; and the encouragement of immigration and the settlement of the 
public lands are the proper objects of care and special provision by the 
Government. On a large scale, the honest and industrious poor of our 
own people and those of other nations, can be provided for, the country 
enriched, and made the true home and paradise of freedom for the 
laboring man. All these idea,s and opinions Mr. Cooper has enlarged 
and dwelt upon in the following writings and publications, which 
he has given to the country for the last twenty years, and especially 
since the war of the rebellion ; and the changes and difficulties of that 
war, which have called to the front the best councillors of the nation. 

THE NOMINATION OF MR. COOPER. 

On the 17th of May, 1876, a large and enthusiastic convention of 
the friends of a specific national currency, commonly called the 
" Greenback," met, and organized the "National Independent Party.' 5 



8 

The convention adopted a platform, and nominated unanimously Mr 
Peter Cooper as their candidate for the Presidency of the United 
States. 

Mr. Cooper was telegraphed the result, but peremptorily declined, at 
first, for personal reasons. Afterwards, on the earnest representations 
of friends, he made a conditional acceptance, based upon the hope that 
one of the subsequent conventions to be held by both the Republican 
and Democratic parties might assume a favorable aspect towards the 
financial doctrines of the Independent party. In this hope he was 
entirely disappointed, as well as in the two letters of acceptance of the 
two candidates nominated by their respective parties. Mr. Cooper then 
addressed an " open letter " to those candidates and to the country, 
accepting, finally, and unconditionally, his nomination, and giving his 
reasons for the same. 

We give here, first, his address to the convention of the Independent 
party. 

Secondly, the platform adopted by the convention. 

Thirdly, Mr. Cooper's letter of conditional acceptance. 

Fourthly, the " open letter " of final acceptance. 

MR. PETER COOPER'S ADDRESS 

" To the Convention, held at Indianapolis, of the N~ational Independent 
Party, May 17 th, 1876. 

" Gentlemen of the Convention : 

" We have met, my friends, to unite in a course of efforts to find out, 
and, if possible, to remove a caiise of evil that has shrank the value of the 
real estate of the nation to a condition where it cannot be sold, or mort- 
gages obtained on it for much more than one-half the amount that the 
same property would have brought three years ago. This dire calamity 
has been brought on our country by the acts of our Government. The 
first act took from the national money its power to pay interest on 
bonds and duties on imports. The second act has contracted the currency 
of the country until it has shrunk the value of property to its present 
condition by destroying public confidence ; and that without shrinking 
any of the debts contracted in its use. 

" I do most humbly hope that I shall be able to show the fatal causes 
that have been allowed to operate and bring this wretchedness and ruin 
to the homes of untold thousands of the men and the women throughout 
our country. 



" Facts will show that it was the unwise acts of our own Government 
that have allowed a policy to prevail, more in the interest of foreigE 
governments than our own. 

" It was these unwise acts of legislation that Drought discredit on our 
national money, as I have said, by introducing into the law that created 
it that terrible word except, which took from our legal money its power 
to pay interest on bonds, and duties on imports. 

" The introduction of that little word except into the original law drew 
tears from the eyes of Thaddeus Stephens when he looked down the cur- 
rent of events and saw our bonds in the hands of foreigners, who would 
be receiving a gold interest on every hundred dollars of bonds that cost 
them but fifty or sixty dollars in gold. 

" But for the introduction of that word except into that original law, 
our bonds would have been taken at par by our own people, and the 
interest would have been paid at home in currency, instead of being paid 
to foreigners in gold. 

" An additional calamity has been brought on our country by a national 
policy that has taken from the people their currency, the tools of their 
trades, the very life-blood of the traffic and commerce of our country. 

" Facts show that in 1865 there was in the hands of the people, as a 
currency, $58 per head, and that at a time of our greatest national 
prosperity. 

" We have now arrived at a time of unequalled adversity, with a cur- 
rency in 1875 of $17 1 3 ^ r per capita, with failures amounting to two 
hundred millions of dollars in a year. 

" Among the causes that now afflict the country, it may be well to look 
at the enormous increase in our foreign importations, which amounted 
to 359 millions in the year 1868, and increased to 684 millions of dollars 
in 1873, and was 574 millions of dollars in 1875. 

" I think you will agree with me, when I say that prosperity can never 
be restored to our beloved country by a national policy that enforces 
idleness and financial distress on so vast a number of the laborers and 
business men of this country. Our nation's wealth must forever de- 
pend on the application of knowledge, economy, and well-directed labor 
to all the useful and necessary purposes of life, but also a proper legis- 
lation for the people. 

" The American people can never buy anything cheap from foreign 
countries that must be bought at the cost of leaving our own good raw 
materials unused, and our own labor unemployed. 

" I find myself compelled to believe that much of the rast legislation 
of our countrv, in reference tc tariff and currency, has been adopted 



10 

nnder the advice and influence of men in the interest of foreign nations 
that have a direct motive to mislead and deceive us. Our prosperity 
as a nation will commence to return when the Congress of our country 
shall assume its own inherent sovereign right to furnish all the inhabi- 
tants of the United States a redeemable, uniform, unfluctuating 
national currency. 

"I do heartily agree with Senator Jones, when he says that ' the 
present is the acceptable time to undo the unwitting and blundering 
work of 1873 ; and to render our legislation on the subject of money, 
consistent with the physical facts, concerning the stock and supply of 
the precious metals throughout the world, and conformable to the con- 
stitution of our country.' 

u I sincerely hope that the concluding advice of Senator Jones will 
make a living and lasting impression, when he says, speaking to the 
present Senate, ' We cannot, we dare not, avoid speedy action on the 
subject. Not only does reason, justice, and authority unite in urging 
us to retrace our steps, but the organic law commands us to do so ; and 
the presence of peril enjoins what the law commands.' 

" The Senator states a most important fact, and one that all know to 
be true, ' that by interfering with the standards of the country, Con- 
gress has led the country away from the realms of prosperity, and 
thrust it beyond the bounds of safety.' He says, truly, ' to refuse to 
replace it upon its former vantage ground would be to incur a respon- 
sibility and a deserved reproach, greater than that which men have 
ever before felt themselves able to bear.' 

'' It will require all the wisdom that can be gathered from the history- 
and experience of the past to enable us to work out our salvation from 
the evils that an unwise legislation has brought on our country. 

" It will be found that nothing short of a full, fair, and frank perform- 
ance of the first duty enjoined on Congress by the Constitution will 
ever restore permanent prosperity to us as a nation. 

" It is a remarkable fact that the most essential element of our colonial 
and national prosperity was obtained by the use of the legal-tender 
paper money — the very thing that our present rulers seem now deter- 
mined to hold up to ridicule and contempt. We are apt to forget that 
the ' continental money ' secured for us a country, and the ' green- 
back ' currency has saved us as a nation. 

" Sir A. Alison, the able and indefatigable English historian, has borne 
testimony to the superior power and value of paper money. He says : 
' When sixteen hundred thousand men, on both sides, were in the con- 



11 

tinental wars with France in Germany and Spain alone, where nothing 
could be purchased except by specie, it is not surprising that guineas 
went where they were so much needed, and bore so high a price.' . . . 
' In truth such was the need of precious metals, owing to this cause, 
that one-tenth of the currency of the world was attracted to Germany 
as a common centre, and the demand could not be supplied ; and by a 
decree in September, 1813, from Peterwalsden, in Germany, the allied 
sovereigns issued paper notes, guaranteed by Russia, Prussia, and Eng- 
land. These notes passed as cash from Kamskatkha to the Rhine, and 
gave the currency which brought the war to a successful close.' 

" In a recent edition of the ' History of Europe,' Sir A. Alison gives 
an additional evidence of the important advantages which experience 
has demonstrated to result from the use of paper currency. 

" He says, ' To the suspension of cash payments by the act of 1797, 
and the power in consequence vested in the Bank of England, of 
expanding its paper circulation in proportion to the abstraction of a 
metallic currency, the wants of the country and the resting of the 
national industry on a basis not liable to be taken away by the muta- 
tions of commerce or the necessities of war — it is to these facts that 
the salvation of the empire must be ascribed.' . . . ' It is remarkable 
that this admirable system, which may be truly called the working 
power of nations during war, became at the close of the war the object 
oi the most determined hostility on the part of the great capitalists 
and chief writers of Political Economy in the country.' . . . ' Here, 
however,' says Alison, ' as everywhere else, experience, the great test 
of the truth, has determined the question. The adoption of the oppo- 
site system of contracting the paper currency in proportion to the 
abstraction of the metallic currency by the acts of 1819 and 1844, fol- 
lowed as they were by the monetary crises of 1825, 1839, and 1847, 
have demonstrated beyond a doubt that it was in the system of an 
expansive currency that Great Britain, during the war, found the sole 
means of her salvation. From 1797 to 1815 commerce, manufactures, 
and agriculture advanced in England, in spite of all the evils of war, 
with a rapidity greater than they had previously done in centuries before. 
This proves beyond a doubt the power of paper money to increase 
the wealth of a nation.' 

" It is worth while to observe that this same Sir A. Alison, who speaks 
so wisely on this subject in reference to the history of his own country, 
while scanning a few years ago the prosperity of our country during 
the war of the Rebellion and immediately after, has a foreboding of 
what might happen, and remarks : 'The American Government may 



12 

make financial and legislative mistakes -which may check the progress 
»f the nation and counteract the advantages which paper money has 
already bestowed upon them; they may adopt the unwise and unjust 
system which England adopted at the close of the French war ; they 
may resolve to pay in gold, and with low prices, the debt contracted 
with paper, and with high prices. But whatever they may do,' he adds, 
' nothing can shake the evidence which the experience of that nation 
during the last six years affords of the power of paper money to pro- 
mote a nation's welfare.' 

"Sir Walter Scott, in his 'Malachi Margrowther's Letters,' shows 
how the wealth of a nation is increased by paper money. ' I assume,' 
he says, ' without hazard of contradiction, that banks have existed in 
Scotland for near one hundred and twenty years ; that they have flour- 
ished, and the country has flourished with them ; and that during the 
last twenty years particularly the notes, and especially the small notes 
which the banks distribute, supply all the demand for a medium of 
currency. This system has so completely expelled gold from Scotland 
that you never by any chance espy a guinea there, except in the purse 
of an accidental stranger, or in the coffers of the banks themselves. But 
the facilities which this paper has afforded to the industrious and enter- 
prising agriculturists and manufacturers, as well as to the trustees of 
the public, in executing national works, have converted Scotland from 
a poor, miserable, barren country into one where, if nature has done 
less, art and industry have done more than, perhaps, in any other 
country in Europe, England not excepted.' 

" President Grant, in his message of 1873, said, ' The experience of 
the present panic has proven that the currency of the country, based, 
as it is, upon its credit, is the best that has ever been devised.' . . . 
* In view of the great actual contraction that has taken place in the 
currency, and the comparative contraction continuously going on, due 
to the increase of the population, the increase o.f manufactories and of 
all industries, I do not believe there is too much of it now for the dull- 
est period of the year.' 

" Notwithstanding these recommendations of the President, Congress 
has continued to tax the people and contract the national currency in a 
vain effort to arrive at specie payments. 

"Our Government should have left that amount of currency in the 
hands of the people, which the necessities of war had compelled it tn 
put in circulation as the only means of the national salvation. 

" Every dollar of currency paid out, whether gold, silver, or paper, was 
given out for ' value received,' and thus became, oy the act of the Gov- 



13 

ernment, a valid claim for a dollar's worth of the whole property of the 
country. Hence, not a dollar of it should ever have been withdrawn. 

u It is now almost universally believed that had the Treasury notes 
continued, as at first issued, to be received for all forms of taxes, du- 
ties, and debts, they would have circulated to this day, as they did then, 
as so much gold, precisely as the Government paper did circulate in 
France when put upon the same footing. 

" This would have saved our country more than one-half of the amount 
of the whole expenses of the war in the present shrinkage of values and 
the interruption to honest industry. It wo\ild have saved us, also, from 
the perpetual drainage of gold to pay interest on our foreign indebted- 
ness. 

" Gentlemen of the Convention, I have heretofore enlarged upon what 
seemed to me the true financial policy of this country in pamphlets and 
writings that I have had the honor to lay before the country, so that 
it would be a vain repetition to go much into that subject now. 

" The paper currency, commonly called ' legal tenders ' or ' green- 
backs,' was actually paid out for value received as so much gold, when 
gold could not be obtained. 

" This being an incontrovertible fact, it follows that every Treasury 
note, demand note, or legal tender, given out as money, in payment for 
any form of labor and property received by the Government, became, 
in the possession of its owners, real dollars that could not be taken 
constitutionally from the people, except by uniform taxes, as on other 
property. 

" But whether our currency will be always on a par with gold or not, 
I have shown from history, and incontrovertible facts prove it, that the 
commercial and industrial prosperity of a country do not depend upon 
the amount of gold and silver there is in circulation. Our prosperity 
must continually depend upon the industry, the enterprise, and the 
busy internal trade and a true independence of foreign nations, which a 
paper circulation, well based on sound credit, has always been found to 
promote. 

'* But I believe prosperity can never again bless our glorious country 
until justice is established, by giving back to the people the exact 
amount of currency found in circulation at the close of the war. That 
was the price of the nation's life. It ought to be restored and made 
the permanent and unfluctuating measure of all values, through all 
coming time — never to be increased or diminished, only, as per capita, 
with the increase of the inhabitants of our country. 

i( This currency must be made receivable for all forms of taxes, duties, 



14 

ana debts, and convertible into interest-bearing bonds, at some equit- 
able rate of interest, and reconvertible into currency at the will of the 
holder. This, we believe, will secure uniformity of value to a degree 
that gold has never attained. President Steele, of Lawrence Univer- 
sity, has well said on this subject : 

" ' In fixing a standard, it is essential to select something that is as 
nearly as possible invariable. The conventional unit of lineal measure 
must not be a line which averages a foot, though it may be fourteen 
inches to-day and nine inches to-morrow. The bushel measm-e should 
not contain two or three quarts more or less at one time than at 
another. For the same reason it is desirable that the unit of value 
should have the same purchasing power next week that it has now.' 

" In conclusion, Gentlemen, I think we have reason to congratulate 
ourselves on the great awakening of the public mind in regard to this 
question of finance. The people are beginning to recognize their rights 
and their duties in this matter. I think the time has come to exhort 
every one to go to the ballot-box and select good and true men, who 
will legislate in accordance with justice, the Constitution, and the true 
interests of the people; and give us wihat will always stand as a monu- 
ment of political wisdom, a true national currency. 

'• With devout wishes for the success of all measures tending to this 
object, I remain yours, in the common interests of our beloved country." 

THE PLATFORM OF THE INDEPENDENT PARTY. 

The following is the Platform of the Independent Party, as adopted 
by its National Convention at Indianapolis : 

" The Independent Party is called into existence by the necessities of 
the people whose industries are prostrated, whose labor is deprived of 
its just reward as the result of the serious mismanagement of the national 
finances, which errors both the Republican and Democratic parties 
neglect to correct. In view of the failure of these parties to furnish 
relief to the depressed industries of the country, thereby disappointing 
the just hopes and expectations of a suffering people, we declare our 
principles and invite all independent and patriotic men to join our ranks 
in this movement for financial reform and industrial emancipation. 

" First — We demand the immediate and unconditional repeal of the 
Specie-resumption Act of January 14, 1875, and the rescue of our in- 
dustries from the disaster and ruin resulting from its enforcement, and 
we call upon all patriotic men to organize in every Congressional district 
of the country, with the view of electing representatives in Congress 
who will legisate for, and a Chief Magistrate who will carry out the 



15 

• 
wishes of, the people in this regard, and thus stop the present suicidal 
and destructive policy of contraction. 

" Second — We believe that United States notes, issued directly by 
the Government and convertible on demand into United States obliga- 
tions, bearing an equitable rate of interest (not exceeding one cent a 
day on each one hundred dollars), and interchangeable with United 
States notes at par, will afford the best circulating medium ever devised ; 
such United States notes should be a full legal tender for all purposes, 
except for the payment of such obligations as are by existing contracts 
expressly made payable in coin. And we hold that it is the duty of 
the Government to provide such a circulating medium, and we insist, 
in the language of Thoman Jefferson, ' that bank paper must be sup- 
pressed and the circulation restored to the nation, to whom it belongs.' 

" Third — It is the paramount duty of the Government in all its legis- 
lation to keep in view the full development of all legitimate business, 
agricultural, mining, manufacturing, and commercial. 

" Fourth — We most earnestly pi-otest against any further issue of 
gold bonds, for sale in foreign markets, by means of which we would be 
made, for a longer pei'iod, hewers of wood and drawers of water for 
foreign nations, especially as the American people would gladly and 
promptly take at par all the bonds the Government may need to sell, 
provided they are made payable at the option of the holder, although 
bearing interest at three and sixty-five one-hundredths per cent, per 
annum, or even a lower rate. 

" Fifth — We further protest against the sale of Government bonds 
for the purpose of buying silver to be used as a substitute for our more 
convenient and less fluctuating fractional currency, which, although well 
calculated to enrich the owners of silver mines, yet in operation will 
still further oppress through taxation an already overburdened people." 

MR. COOPER'S ACCEPTANCE. 

"New York, May 31, 1876. 
" Hon. Moses W. Field, Chairman, and Hon. Thomas J. Durant 
Secretary of the National Executive Council of the Independent 
Party : 
" Gentlemen — Your formal, official notification of the unanimous 
nomination, tendered by the National Convention of the Independent 
Party at Indianapolis, on the 1 7th instant, to me for the high office .of 
President of the United States is before me ; . together with 

an authenticated copy of the admirable platform which the Convention 
adopted. 

5 



16 

"While I most heartily thank the Comentijn through you for the 
great honor they have thus conferred upon me, kindly permit me to sa> 
that there is a bare possibility, if wise counsels prevail, that the sorely- 
needed relief from the blighting effects of past unwise legislation relative 
to finance, which the people so earnestly seek, may yet be had through 
either the Republican or Democratic party ; both of them meeting in 
national convention at an early date. 

" It is unnecessary for me to assure you that while I have no aspira- 
tion for the position of Chief Magistrate of this great Republic, I will 
most cheerfully do what I can to forward the best interests of my 
country. 

" I, therefore, accept your nomination, conditionally, expressing the 
earnest hope that the Independent Party may yet attain its exalted 
aims, while permitting me to step aside and remain in that quiet which 
is most congenial to my nature and time of life. 

" Most respectfully yours, 

" Peter Cooper." 

an open letter by peter cooper to tiie candidates for the 
presidency, nominated by the republican and democratic par- 
ties, in convention assembled. 

" New York, July 25th, 1876. 

" Son. JR. B. Hayes and Hon. Samuel tT. Tdden. 
" Gentlemen : — 

" I find myself impelled by an irresistible anxiety for my country ; 
by the palpable facts of distress and suffering that surround me, and 
which I am compelled to know pervade the families of the great mass 
of our people ; by the earnest calls that have bean made to me from all 
parts of this great country ; and especially by the solemn and deliberate 
*et of an earnest and intelligent body of my fellow-citizens, in conven- 
tion assembled, who, setting forth clearly their convictions as to the 
real cause of this wide-spread distress among the masses of our country- 
men, have called upon me to represent those convictions, and nominated 
me as their chief executive to carry them out ; — by all these consider- 
ations I feel called upon to address a few words to you, who now hold 
the nominations of the two great organized political parties in this 
country for the highest positions of responsibility as to the future 
happiness and prosperity of this great people. 

" Far be it from me to attribute any want of patriotism or any un- 
worthy motive to your honorable selves, or to the leaders of those 



17 

conventions which have nominated you both, respectively, to the high 
office of the President of the United States. But the imminent ques- 
tion of the day, that which touches the cause of the present financial 
ruin and suffering of so many, is one of such palpable facts and simple 
deductions therefrom, that I must think there is some mistake in the 
radical principle by which these facts are viewed by you and the great 
parties which you represent. I find in the platforms of the convention? 
of the two great parties no adequate expression either of the facts, the 
causes, or the principles that underlie the present great distress of our 
nation, when thousands of honest, industrious people are filled with 
anxiety for the bread of their families, or are suffering already from an 
inadequate supply. This seems to me the gi'eat and paramount ques- 
tion of the day, to which our chief thought and most efficient action 
should be directed, and before which v all other questions should sink 
into insignificance. 

" What is the cause of this wide-spread ruin and present distress, and 
what is the immediate remedy ? 

" A few facts of history and of public record will show this. Ac- 
cording to Spaulding's Financial History of the War (p. 201) the public 
debt of the United States stood on the books of the Treasury, October 
1st, 1865, at a total of $2,803,549,437. According to the same author, 
who is a strong advocate for specie payments (page 10, Introduction), 
out of this debt, in 1864, ' the inflating paper issues, outstanding, were 
over $1,100,000,000,' — and gold reached its highest quotation, 2.85. 

" Now, be it remembered, that although a few money-changers, specu- 
lators, and importers were willing to give $2.85 of paper for one dollar 
in gold, yet the people were using this paper to buy flour and exchange 
their commodities at prices that were far less than this inflated price of 
gold. 

" Gold was no longer the standard of exchange except in foreign com- 
modities where 'balances' had to be paid in gold. The internal 
trade, commerce, and industries of the country were steadily increasing, 
and never before so flourishing as during the time of this famine for 
gold. In an evil hour, it became the policy of this Government to re- 
duce all our paper currency to the standard and par value of gold. 
This \*as attempted by the withdrawal of the paper currency as fast as 
practicable, and by absorbing the same by an arbitrary law, into a debt 
for so much gold as the face of the paper, in the shape of gold bonds, 
bearing the yearly interest of six per cent, in gold ! In the course of 
less than eight years this change was effected, and the people's money 
and currency of all kinds were reduced subsequently from $2,192,395,527, 



18 

as represented on the Treasurer's books on September 1, 1865, to the 
sum of $631,488,676 on the 1st of November, 1873, making a reduc- 
tion of the currency in eight years of $1,561,906,851 ! (See Congres- 
sional Record, March 31, 1874, speech of John M. Bright, of Ten- 
nessee.) This brought on the panic of 1873 and all our present finan- 
cial troubles. Although a part of this vast sum was a kind of currency 
that drew interest, and, therefore, partook also of the nature of an 
investment, yet, as Mr. Maynard, Chairman of the Committee on 
Banking and Currency, said, from his seat in Congress, on occasion 
of Mr. Bright' s speech, ' those issues were engraved and prepared in a 
form to circulate as money, and, as a matter of fact, did so circulate,' 
until either they were funded or ' the interest accumulated so as to 
make them superior to the ordinary class of currency.' But this 
stupendous decrease in the people's money — the very tools of their 
trades and enterprises, of every description, the use of which they had 
fairly earned by the blood and sacrifices of a great war, and the beneficial 
effects of which were proved by the great activity in business and trade 
which it engendered as long as it lasted — this great reduction in the 
money of the people was made by methods equally unjust, as they were 
disastroiis to the prosperity of the country. 

" This paper currency was absorbed by interest-bearing gold bonds, 
which were boiight by the paper, which in its turn had been purchased 
by gold at 40, 50, and 60 per cent, discount ; thus turning the 
debt of the country to one of twice its value in paper, and paying 
for the gold bonds at half their value in paper. This was done at a 
time when this paper currency was doing the nation all the good that 
so much gold could do for our domestic prosperity and trade. The 
people were biiilding up the country with a rapidity unexampled before, 
with this paper, which, if it had been fully honored by the Government 
that issued it, and received for all imports, duties, and debts, and al- 
lowed to be exchanged at par for bonds at an equitable rate of interest, 
would not have permitted any premium on gold. 

" These are the facts. The panic of '73 and all the consequent dis- 
tress of the industiial classes of our country, and its baffled enterprise, 
is distinctly due to the contraction of the currency to this enormous 
extent during the eight years preceding 1873. It stopped credit, pro- 
duction, and consumption, and made much of what currency was left 
rush, in a panic, to the head money-centres — as the blood in an apo- 
plectic fit rushes to the head — where this money is now vainly seeking 
investment, ' in first-class security,' at two per cent. ; while the country 
at large is palsied in its enterprises and industries fcr "want Df this verj 



19 

currency. And what was all this ione for ? To change the debt of 
the country without reducing its real amount, from a shape beneficial to 
the people, and incorj>orated as an integral part of the very life-blood 
of all their rising industries and their growing trade — this paper cur- 
rency was turned, almost with the suddenness of a conjuration, and by 
the forms of an arbitrary construction of law, into another shape, 
twice in amount as measured by the same paper, and taxing the people 
interest on it, in gold, to the amount of $94,684,209 per year. (See 
statament of the public debt, June, 1876.) 

" Most of this interest is now paid to foreign bondholders, alien to 
our institutions and uninterested in our prosperity, except to keep up 
our ability and willingness to bear taxation. 

"And what is the specious reason for this change? ' To return to 
specie payments ! ' 

" What can this policy result in but a further distress and impoverish- 
ment of this people and the building up of the interests of a class whose 
business it is to invest or to lend money, and whose policy will be to get 
the highest rate of interest ? Such are apt to forget that the immediate 
gain of such a policy is far less than that which arises from the pros- 
perity of the whole people, and the multiplication of wealth that comes 
from enterprise unimpeded and industry constantly employed. We may 
concede all that is claimed of the necessity of ' specie payments,' and 
our currency being made on a par with gold. But this disastrous and 
ill-judged method of i-eaching specie payments, by the past and present 
contraction of our currency, is very unjust and cruel to our people; for 
it shrunk the value of all property, so that it could not be sold, or mort- 
gages obtained on it, for more than one-half the amount that the same 
property would have brought three years previous, and reduced the 
wages of labor to the same degree. This return to 'specie payments ' 
may be made without such injury, by honoring the currency in every 
way ; by making it exclusively the money as well as the legal tender of 
the country ; by receiving it for all forms of taxes, duties, debts to 
Government, as well as the payment of all private debts ; by establish- 
ing its value on a firm basis, at a fixed and equitable rate of interest, 
which it may always find in an interconvertible bond ; and by determin- 
ing the volume of the currency, where the unobstructed laws of the in- 
ternal trade and industry of this country may require it to be, under 
the free use of the interconvertible bond. This great national debt 
ought to be held as a great trust by the Government of this people, and 
made the receptacle of all the trust funds, and the savings of all the poor 
among our own people. It should be an investment put within the 



20 

reach of our own people, instead of being sent abroad to swell the coffers 
of the rich in other countries. 

" If the Government, after the war of rebellion, had been as anxious 
to heal the wounds which that unhappy war created, to alleviate the 
poverty which it brought on a large section of our country, to reinstate 
the broken industries and enterprises of our whole people, as it had been 
to carry that war vigorously, at any cost, on to victory, the Government 
would have seen that peace had its demands as well as war. If a Gov- 
ernment is bound to protect the people from the aggressions of war, it 
is also bound to save it from commercial distress, and the sorrows of a 
laboring population without work. The Government might now free 
hundreds of thousands from imminent want, and set the wheels of trade 
again in motion by building the two great railroads across the Conti- 
nent at the Southwest and Northwest of the country that private enter- 
prise has already commenced, but cannot complete, for want of capital. 
The legal tender of a solvent country like this, cannot be called a debt 
in any proper sense of the word. It is money, and measures the ex- 
changeable value of all property, gold included. All must see that the 
currency paid out by the Government for value received became the 
people's money, over which the Government lost all control, except to 
tax it, as all other property, to meet the wants of Government. This 
amount of money, even now, may be given back to the people in works 
of great national importance, like that of a Northern & Southeim Pacific 
Railroad, that would, to-day, be worth th*ir cost in aiding to put down 
the Indian wars that now threaten the frontier of our country. What 
is a Government good for, if in such a country as this, with all its 
material resources, and vast extent, it cannot prevent a large part of its 
people from the distress of want of work and of bread ? This seems to 
me the first duty of Government. 

" Sorry am I to see, and I say it without any reproach cast upon the 
integrity of those concerned, that in neither of the platforms of the poli- 
tical parties that represent the governing intelligence and wealth of this 
country is this great question of finance either discussed or recognized 
in its principles, or bearings upon the happiness and prosperity of this 
people — except in a way that seems to me adverse to both. 

" I have, therefore, consented, with great reluctance, to go before the 
people — not for the strife of office, not for the petty triumphs of a suc- 
cessful candidate, but for the vindication of a great principle that under- 
lies all true Republican or Democratic Institutions — namely, that the 
interest and happiness of the whole people are superior to the demands 
or interests of any one class ; that in the neglect or defiance of this prin 



21 

oiple, the great debt of this people, incurred by a war to save the life 
of this nation, has been administered too much by the advice and in the 
interest of a small class that care for their income, but cannot look ou1 
for, or attend to active investments ; hence, they prefer the bond to the 
currency ; and for another class who desire the highest interest for the 
smallest investment ; hence they prefer gold to a paper legal tender ; 
and for still another class who, alien to our institutions and country, 
care only to tax its energies and wealth for the highest interest they can 
draw for an immediate investment of their money. But these are not 
the interests of the people of this country. Neither houor nor justice 
requires such administration of the public debt of this country. 

" I feel, therefore, constrained by every principle of honor and love 
for my country to come forward at an advanced age, and with a mind 
that would gladly seek repose, after the toils of a long and laborious life, 
to answer the call of a portion of my countrymen, to try these issues 
before the people of the whole country ; to test these truths which we 
hold to be self-evident, as soon as they are honestly examined, as are 
the truths of the Declaration of Independence. One of the chief of 
these truths is that as all rightful Governments are made for the people 
and by the people ; they must be administered with a parental care in 
.the interests of the whole people, and not fora class. No single interest 
touches the domestic comfort and prosperity of the people as this one 
of the currency ; and in the present condition of the country, none is 
of so much immediate importance or calls for more immediate solution. 
To put off this question, therefore, with vague expressions of reform, 
and the desirableness of ' specie payments,' is to ignore the ruling interest 
of the hour. It is to surrender the people to their sufferings without 
any promise of remedy. 

" I appeal, therefore, from those who seem insensible to the cry of the 
people to the people themselves. I appeal from the political parties, 
organized to control the Government, and distribute the offices and 
emoluments of office, to the great industrial classes who are organized 
to protect their interests and obtain some recognition of their rights 
from the Government of the country. Let them substitute co-operation 
for 'strikes,' and unite to save themselves and the country from the 
present disaster aud distress to all the industrial classes. Let no man 
think of the bullet while he has the ballot in his hand. It needs but the 
use of that simple instrument of political power to rectify all our dis- 
contents and social evils. 

" Let us have our national currency duly honored ; let us take the 
testimony of the nation's experience, and that of other countries, as to 



22 

what such currency can do for our prosperity ; let the gold par be reached 
by rendering our currency of higher and indispensable uses, as now ex- 
emplified in France, and not by contracting its amount; and let its 
volume and its value be determined by the interconvertible bond, placed 
at the disposal of the wants of the people and governed by all the forms 
and sanctities of law ; and not surrender the currency to the ever- 
changing basis of a commodity like gold — and we shall have peace on 
this question. ' Justice will be established and the general welfare pro- 
moted ; ' prosperity again will revisit us, and we shall vindicate the 
wisdom and superiority of our free institutions before the world. 

" France, with her 600,000,000 of legal paper, has kept her industries 
profitably employed by keeping her paper receivable for all forms of 
taxes, duties, and debts. 

" My views upon the currency I have heretofore briefly expressed as 
follows : 

" ' The worth or exchangeable value of gold is as uncertain as other 
products of human labor, such as wheat or cotton. The exchangeable 
value of anything depends on its convertibility into something else that 
has value at the option of the individual. This rule applies to paper 
money as to anything else. But how shall Government give an exchange- 
able value to a paper currency ? Can it be done by a standard which 
is bevond its control and which naturally fluctuates, while the sign of 
exchange indicated by the paper remains, the same ? 

" ' This is the unsound theory which possesses the minds of our people 
and of our politicians. 

<r< We must cut loose from this unreasonable theory, or we shall be 
subject, for all time, to these periodic disturbances of our currency 
which bring such wide-spread ruin and distress to our commercial in- 
dustries, and work, on the part of the Government, positive and cruel 
injustice. The remedy seems to me to be very plain. 

" ' First — We must put this whole power of coining money or issuing 
currency, as Thomas Jefferson says, " where, by the Constitution, it 
properly belongs : '— entirely into the hands of our Government. That 
Government is a Republic, hence it is under the control of the people. 
Corporations and States have hitherto, in some form or other, divided 
this power with the Government. Hence come the embarrassments and 
the fluctuations, as may be easily shown. 

" ' But now we must trust our Government with this whole function 
of providing the standards and measures of exchange, as we trust it 
with the weights and measures of trade. So far from putting the people 
in the power of our Government and at the caprice of parties in power, 



23 

I contend it will bring the Government more under control of the people 
and give a check to mere party rule. For the more stake the people 
have in the wisdom and honesty of the Government, the more watchful 
and firm they will be in its control. 

" ' Secondly — We must require the Government to make this cur- 
rency, at all times, and, at the option of the individual, convertible. But 
the currency must be convertible into something over which the Govern- 
ment has entire control, and to which it can give a definite as well 
as a permanent value. This is its own interest-bearing bonds. These 
are, in fact, a mortgage upon the embodied wealth of the whole country. 
The reality of their value is as sound and as permanent as the Govern- 
ment itself, and the degree of their value can be determined exactly by 
the rate of interest the Government may think proper to fix.' 

" The time has come when the claims of a common humanity, and all 
that can move the manhood of an American citizen, must unite in a 
demand for an act of common justice now due to the American people 
who have saved our country from ruin, and will, I trust, forever protect 
it. The Constitution has made it the first and the most important duty 
of Congress 'to establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity ', provide for 
the common defence, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings 
of liberty to ourselves and our posterity? 

" To my personal friends I need not say that this sacrifice of peace 
and rest is like the surrender of what remnant of life I may have. But 
to the country at large, I will say that I am willing to stand in the 
place where I have been put by the judgment of an intelligent and 
honest portion of my countrymen, to stand with them, and try before 
the whole people this cause of the people's money, and the true financial 
policy of this Government. 

" Most respectfully yours, 

" Peter Cooper." 



A LETTER ON THE CURRENCY. 



By PETER COOPER. 



Addressed in 1875. 



To the Editors and Legislators of my native City and Country : 

An inextinguishable desire to do what I can, in this the eighty-fifth 
vear of roy age, impels me to call and fix the attention of the American 
people on the appalling causes that have so effectually paralyzed the 
varied industries of our country. This destructive cause has already 
shrunk the value of property, in less than three years, to a condition 
whei-e real estate cannot be sold, or mortgages obtained on it, for more 
than one-half the amount it would have brought, three years ago. 

There is nothing that can be more important than to find out and 
remove a cause that is bringing bankruptcy and ruin on millions of the 
most industrious and enterprising men of the American people. The 
national policy that has brought this frightful calamity to our country 
should receive the most thorough investigation and the most decided 
action of our Government. 

I propose to show the true public policy that underlies this whole 
question, and to indicate what appears to me as the principles and the 
just methods that ought to actuate the people, in their exercise of 
power through the Government, and the remedies which that Govern- 
ment ought to devise. For it must ever be borne in mind that the Gov- 
ernment and its policy in this country is just what we, the people, 
make it. It is our duty, therefore, at all times and in every way, to 
enlighten and exhort the people, and trust to such appeals, rather than 
any immediate criticism or direct appeal to the Government itself. 

The whole question of the currency and money arises from the neces- 
sity of trade or exchanges among men in the products of their industry, 
and the causes and methods that make these exchanges fair, just, and 
beneficial to all concerned, or a means of tyranny and injustice, and an 
occasion for the exercise of greed and selfishness. "A false balance is 
an abomination to the Lord, but a just weight is His delight." This 
proverb contains the secret of all unfairness in the dealings between 
man and man. Justice and truth are at the bottom of Ul fair exchanges 



25 



that are beneficial to both parties ; but false balances and nnjust weights 
Ire t„e metns by which the strong and the insincere oppress or deceive 

*£t*S*r**-i in -ore simple way, this necessity of exchange 
anronl mer and the process by which injustice first creeps in and the 
IZ meS of keeping the true balance and the "just weight m the 
exchange of one equivalent for the another. 

"2° a community or race of men to have passed that point in 
theii TotreL In simple barter is any longer the sufficient means of 
exchan^when some easier and more rapid method must be devised. 
The K thin' selected for this purpose is a concentrated and valuable 
fom of labor! the most portable, durable, and susceptible of carrying 
onTts very fa e the record and sign of its value. Such is gold and sil- 
ver money 7 Its value is two-fold : it is both intrinsic and representa- 
tive But it is its representative value that makes it money, or a con- 
vent'iona si»n and record of exchanges. So far as its intrinsic value s 
concerned the exchange of a piece of gold for anything else is simple 
barter Ba it holds the « balance » even, and it gives a just weight 
for w iatever is exchanged for it, because it has cost labor to produce it 
Butlere comes a time in the complex and numerous exchange that 
take nlace between men in a higher state of civilization when even the 
barte of »okl and silver for other products, concentrated and portable 
L is he^intrinsic value, becomes too cumbrous a method, and too slow 
To effe Hhese exchanges fast enough, and to keep the recoro of ^ 
the most convenient shape. For this purpose the intrinsic value ot the 
means of exchange is superseded entirely by the representative. The 
Scord is taken for a time for the transaction itself, which, however, s 
Sled will take place infallibly ; and in order to secure a real result 
S thTexchan-e of values, which at first are the subject of promise and 
record m rdy tlte must be some real or assumed ability on the par 
of the ^e who makes the promise, that he can and will mak > that 
promise good. This is the origin of paper money. The value of th s 
papTr mfney, although not intrinsic, as is that of gold and silver, yet is 
no less real provided the exchange of values it is used to record can in 
any wa"b 'made certain ; it must hold an « even balance," and be >sure 
to give a " just weight » in the end. But here is the point ^eiede- 
ei? and injustice Jay creep in. The paper money is -*^4£^£ 
ative of value, and a mere sign of a real exchange of values to .ake 
place at some future time. It may, hence, be falsified or trusted blindly, 
Ld on insufficient grounds. The selfishness and greed of men, or even 
their groundless hopes and miscalculations, may give a temporary value 
to thif promise to pay, which it cannot sustain. This is the secret of 
panics revulsions in business, and prostration of credits The he 
cTes to tie surface sooner or later, and the credulous find themselves 



TMsTab lity increases in proportion to the want of integrity and 
commercial indulgence in individuals and «^^^™£ 
methods of exchange take place. Individuals are lett *°J* t ^™ ™* 
such a vast interest as the power of making paper ™™**^*^ 
porate bodies of men, and these in turn are less to be austed than well 



26 

organized governments. Governments themselves differ very much in 
this respect, in proportion as they are responsible to the people and 
easily held in check, or rectified by the demands of public interest. 
Hence, a true republican government is the safest agency in the world 
to entrust with the power of making paper money. 

A semi-barbarous government, like the Turkish, will, from time to 
time, even call in all the coin of the country, and reissue it again in a 
depreciated condition and value. So, paper money is subject to great 
fluctuations in value, if there be any uncertainty in the real and perma- 
nent integrity of the power that issues the paper, or a capricious use of 
its authority in determining its standard of value. 

Experience has shown that individuals cannot be trusted with 
such a power. Even large corporations cannot be trusted with the 
common welfare involved in this privilege, and while governments are 
the safest depositories of the power, they must be such as are not sub- 
ject either to revolution or to any radical changes of policy, or to any 
irresponsible exercise of power. This, it appears to me, is now the 
condition of our Government. Its credit has been, and is now, the sup- 
port of one of the greatest bonded debts, by means of which the life and 
the perpetuity of the Union has been secured. The faith of this Gov- 
ernment now gives value to an immense paper currency for which the 
law has provided no redemption. It seems preposterous, therefore, to 
doubt the ability of this Government to give stability to any currency 
which it might adopt as indispensable to the welfare of the nation. 

That value has hitherto been measured by its exchangeableness with 
gold, as indicated by the signs of value that are stamped on each, or 
dollar for dollar. But this is subjecting piiper to the laws of barter, as 
if it had an intrinsic value. It presumes that corporations or govern- 
ments can control what is uncontrollable, namely, the amount of gold 
that may, at any time, be in a country. 

Gold is diffusible, because it is accepted by all countries as a standard 
of value and a means of exchange. But it is also fluctuating in any local- 
ity by the laws of production, supply, and demand all over the world. 

To fix upon an arbitrary and fluctuating standard, such as the worth 
or exchangeable value of a gold dollar, to indicate the exchangeable 
power of a paper dollar, is as uncertain as to take any other permanent 
product of human labor, such as a bushel of wheat or a pound of cotton. 
Nor can any standard be fixed for the value of a currency, because the 
uses and demand of currency is a fluctuating want itself. Now, the 
exchangeable value of anything depends upon its convertibility into 
something else that has value, at the ojJtion of the individual. This rule 
applies to paper money as to anything else. But how shall Govern- 
ment give an exchangeable value to a paper currency ? Can it do so 
by a standard which is beyond its control, and which naturally fluctu- 
ates, while the sign of exchange indicated by the paper remains the 
same ? 

This is the unsound state which possesses the minds of our people 
and of our politicians. 

We must come out of this unreasonable condition, or we shall be sub- 
ject, for all time, to these periodic disturbances of our money and cur- 



27 



rencv which bring such widespread ruin and distress on our commer 
cLllIusSes, an'd work on the part of the Governmen^ positive and 
™iel injustice The remedy seems to me to be very plain. 

MW We must put this whole power of coining money or issuing 
Jn ^ncyraTThoma? Jefferson says! « where by the Constitution i 
cuirency, ab of Qur Governmen t. That 

properly belongs enti rely m ^^ q£ ^ people _ 

CoZSns Td S?athLve hitherto, in some form or other, divided 
Slower witTthe Government. Hence come the embarrassments and _ 

Loot and give a check to mere party rule. For the more stake the 
neople have in the wisdom and honesty of the administration of the 
Government the more watchful and firm they will be m is control. 

ZTX-We must require the Government to make this currency 
at 7i and at the option of the individual, redeemable The 
GovernmTt' can redeem its promises to pay in three ways-by its 
faxes S bonds, and by coin. The taxes are just as sound and true a 
Method of redemption, as the real debts against a man are an eqmvalent 
^r Ms notes For when a man pays his taxes, with paper, he pays 
{hit he owes the Government in evidences of debt, on the part of the 

^FuX^ore the Government may redeem its notes, in bonds. 
Tils method although it is paying one debt by another, is redemp- 
tion by a form more° desirable to "the holder; because one is an in- 
terest bear in » debt, and the other is not. But to prevent the 
curitcv from running all into bonds, two regulations are necessary, 
fir S the bonds should ^econvM^^^^^^ 
*w +v,p hnnds should bear a ower rate of interest, than the average 01 
S^Sve business. The Go— J,s enti. con- 
trol over its bonds, to which it can give a ^^ " ™^SS* 
Tient value These are, in fact, a mortgage upon the embodied weaiui 
aflhl whole country The reality of their value is as sound and as 
ptmlnentt tii°e U GoJernment itself and the degree o ^^ ~ 
be determined exactly by the amount of interest the Government may 

th ?L P 3ertiu5ty will always keep a check, both in the amount of 
currency and the amount of bonds that may be eaM"^ 
for the bonds are property, creating an. income, and the «™JJJ" 
merelv the measure of property and the means of exchange If cunenc) 
^til thThands of'tlle l^*^^^^j£E 
exchanges numerous, and investments profitable II «™™g^ 1 ^ 
and bonds increase, it will only be to the extent of ^ £ ^-al flue 
tuations which seasons and times bring upon he 1 ^ u ^enet^ 
of man But at no time will either the bonds or the ^"".ency be 
LTd^g upon the market, for they will be mutually converge. 



28 

Lastly, the Government can afford to redeem its paper in coin, if it 
be also the exclusive paper money of the country ; if it be the only legal 
tender for debts, and if it be received by the Government for all taxes 
and dues, and convertible, at par, with the bonds of the jGrovern- 
ment, at the will of the holder ; for then, the currency would be on a 
par with gold and silver. But the Government can never afford to do 
this unless all these conditions are observed, with regard to its currency. 
The Government can have no other control than these conditions give 
over the relations between paper and coin, except that of changing the 
standard weiglit of the coin dollar. This has been done by Governments, 
with advantage to the interests of trade, many times, in the history of 
coining, because the demands of trade and commerce have outgrown the 
supply of the precious metals, and it became necessary to redivide the 
coin as a standard of value. The precious metals are now used mostly to 
pay "balances" in the commerce of nations; and this very use disquali- 
fies them from being the domestic currency of any nation. But a cer- 
tain quantity of gold and silver, subject to recoining from time to time, 
will be always very convenient as a standard and measure for a unit of 
value in the currency. 

When we look into the history of the past for the real cause of those 
periodical panics, that have brought financial ruin on so many of our 
people, we find that on all those occasions, as in the present paralyzed 
condition of the trade and commerce of the country, the main difficulty 
has originated in the unfortunate financial policy adopted by the Gen- 
eral Government — a policy that is producing for our people what the 
policy of the British Government has brought about for the people of 
that country, where the real estate of the whole of England has, in a 
comparatively short period, been transferred from 165,000 of the past, 
to 30,000 land-owners of the present. And this, where the most rapid 
increase of wealth, perhaps, in the world, is also attended with the 
worst and most unequal distribution ; and where, instead of a diffused 
happiness and universal prosperity, the rich grow richer and the poor 
poorer, by constant vacillations in the measures of value. 

Our own Government, instead of taking the whole subject of money 
and currency entirely in its hands, as provided for by the Constitution, 
allowed, for a time, local banks to multiply and continue until their 
notes, which were promises to pay specie on demand, became mere delu- 
sions, and the best informed and most prudent merchant found it im- 
possible to distinguish those that were redeemable, or convertible into 
gold, from those that were not. The chartered Bank of the United 
States, in the first four years of its operation, issued $40,000,000 of 
paper with only $300,000 in specie to redeem its notes. Banks evaded 
the law by issuing paper that they were unable to redeem. The reason 
of this lay in the fact that the demand for currency at times was far in 
excess of the quantity that could be reabsorbed into gold, when the 
currency was no longer needed. 

Gold alone, was not its projjer agent of conversion, because it is un- 
certain in volume, and is itself subject to the magnetic attraction of a 
foreign trade that needs it to make up its balances. 

Had the currency, which should have been all United States cur- 



29 

rency, been at once convertible into United States bonds, which, in- 
stead of locking it up, as would be the case now, should have given a 
small interest, until the currency was wanted again, when the bonds 
should immediately be convertible into currency, we would have 
escaped the panics and stagnation of trade and stoppage of industry 
which has now affected the commerce of the world. 

The local banks were allowed to continue until the war of the rebel- 
lion compelled the Government to issue a currency as legal tender, as 
the only advisable means of carrying on its operations for the safety of 
the nation's life. 

In this extremity our Government was literally compelled, as a war 
measure, to offer to these local banks nearly double the ordinary interest 
of loans, in order to induce them to lend their money to the Govern- 
ment, and base their banking on the bonds of the Government, and 
exchange their own currency for that of the United States. This 
great advantage given to capital invested in the local banks should have 
come to an end when the war was over, as it was only a war measure. 
At the end of the war, common justice to the debtor class should have 
prevented the Government from doing anything to lessen the purchasing 
power of those legal-tender notes which the people had been literally 
compelled to accept for all products of their labor. The circulation 
should have been left simply to the natural law. At the close of the 
war, the legal tenders should have been made the permanent currency 
of the country, and the volume should not have been increased or 
diminished, except as per capita, with the increase of the population of 
the country. And further, it should have been made convertible into 
the bonds of the Government, over which it has entire control, and to 
which it could give a permanent value in interest. Instead of this, 
what do we find the Government doing ? Resolving that at a certain 
future time, in 1879, the currency shall be convertible into gold ! "Why 
did not our Congressmen proceed to resolve that, by that time, there 
should be gold enough in the country to absorb all the currency that 
foreigners and importers might wish to be converted into gold ? But 
this they could not do. Hence the present unwillingness of capital to 
invest in business or manufacture, because the capitalist does not know 
what his property or his money may be worth, four years hence. This 
currency must be made convertible, or it cannot measure real property, 
or properly represent it. But its convertibility into gold cannot be 
made a matter of legal enactment, until the other conditions are ob- 
served, as above stated, which will make our currency on a par with 
gold. For this purpose, I would demonetize gold and silver, altogether 
except as tokens of value, and have nothing but its paper, the legal 
tender of the country. The paper then would be of such indispensable 
use that what was needed to be turned into specie, could be converted 
at par. 

The only policy the Government could adopt to influence the influx 
of gold into this country, and keep its relations on a par with other 
commodities and with the paper currency, would be that the Govern- 
ment should require its import duties to be paid in legal tenders, 
adding always the premium on gold to the amount as estimated in the 



30 

paper currency. That would be desirable at present, or until" the 
national debt is extinguished, because the Government is under obliga- 
tion to pay the interest of its bonds in gold. It will have a tendency 
to keep the paper on a par with gold ; for it will make it easier to paj 
the dues of the Government ; besides, the superior convenience and 
certain convertibility of the paper will always have a tendency to keep 
it on a par, or even make it more valuable than gold. But interest- 
bearing bonds are purely a subject of legal enactment, and hence can 
be controlled by the Government. This is the whole secret of the diffi- 
culty, and the real key to our financial condition. Our currency, in 
point of fact, is not convertible into gold. When it is not needed, as 
at present, to the full extent of its volume to effect the exchanges 
or pay the wages of labor, because these are in a measure interrupted, 
what is to be done with it ? Some say, " Call it in and burn it up," 
that the rest may be worth its own volume in gold. But this currency 
has already been in circulation ; it is now the measure of the whole 
property of the country, and has been the measure of man} 7 exchanges, and 
now represents the great mass of indebtedness. To bring down its 
relative value to that of gold is as arbitrary a measure, as to bring it to 
the standard of any other product — that of wheat or iron, for instance. 

It will place all in the power of those who have the most gold. It 
will transfer a large part of the property of the country to foreigners, or 
to those who can readily draw gold from Europe. 

But let us consider this subject more closely. If we admit that there 
is at any one time only a certain amount of gold in the world, it is cer- 
tain that our community or nation cannot obtain more than its share 
without leaving all the others in a deficiency — at least for a time. 

By this means one nation has the power to derange the exchanges, 
and through these, the industries of every other country. The caprice 
and power even of a few large capitalists can do this. It would be, 
therefore, an unwise policy for our government to allow this one article 
of gold, that all nations are struggling to obtain by the use of all the 
arts that human ingenuity can devise, and which must be employed in 
settling all balances of trade between different countries, and which, as 
a product of nature and of human industry, is uncontrollable by any 
law that the government can devise — to make this the standard of all 
values and the legalized measure of all trade and exchange in this coun- 
try, would be in direct opposition to the opinion of many of the wisest 
statesmen that our country has produced. This will appear by the fol- 
lowing expression of their views : 

JEFFERSON. 

Vol. VI., p. 199, Jefferson's, works, letter to Mr. Eppis. 

" Hank paper must be suppressed, and the circulating medium must 
be restored to the nation to lohom it belongs. It is the only fund on 
which they can rely for loans ; it is the only resource which can never 
fail them, and it is an abundant one for every necessary purpose. 
Treasury bills, bottomed on taxes, bearing or not bearing interest, as may 
be found necessary, thrown into circulation, will take the place of $0 



31 

much gold or silver, which last, when crowded, will find an efflux into 
other countries, and thus keep the quantum of medium at its salutary 

level " 

Also the threat statesman and philosopher, Benjamin Franklin, m 
Vol IV pa °e 82, of his work, says : " Gold and silver are not intrin- 
sically of equal value with iron. Their value rests chieny in the esti- 
mation they happen to be in, among the generality of nations Any 
other well-founded credit is as much an equivalent as gold and si vet. 
Paper money, well founded, has great advantages over gold and silver, 
bein* liaht and convenient for handling large sums, and not like y to 
have 3 its volume reduced by demands for exportation. On the whole, 
no method has hitherto been formed to establish a medium ot trade 
equal in all its advantages to bills of credit made a general legal- 
tender." 

john c. calhoun's opinion. 

The following is an extract from a speech of Hon. John C. Calhoun, 
in the Senate of the United States, on the currency issue, and is emi- 
nently appropriate to be quoted in the prevailing discussion. Mr. Gal- 
houn said, Vol. III., p. 83: 

" It appears to me, after bestowing the best reflection I can give the 
subject, that no convertible paper— that is, no paper whose credit rests 
on the promise to pay coin— is suitable for a currency. It is the form ot 
credit proper in private transactions between man and man, but not tor 
a standard of value, to perform exchanges generally, which constitutes 
the approximate function of money, or currency." Then on page 87 : 
" No one can doubt but that the Government credit is better than that 
of any bank— more stable and more safe. . . . Bank paper is 
cheap to those who make it, but dear, very dear, to those who use it. 
On the other hand the credit of the Government, while it would greatly 
facilitate its financial operations, would cost nothing, or next to noth- 
ing both to it and the people, and would, of course, add nothing to the 
cost of production, which would give every branch of our industries- 
agriculture, commerce, and manufactures, as far as its circulation might 
extend great advantages both at home and abroad ; . . . and I 
now undertake to affirm, and without the least fear that I can be 
answered, that a paper issued by government, with the simple promise 
to receive it for all its dues, leaving its creditors to take it, or gold or 
silver, at their option, would, to the extent it could circulate, form a 
perfect paper circulation, which could not be abused by the Govern- 
ment ; that it would be as uniform in value as the metals themselves; 
and I shall be able to prove that it is within the Constitution and 
powers of Congress to use such a paper in the management of its finances, 
according to the most rigid rule of construing the Constitution.' 

SPENCER ON FINANCE. 

Herbert Spencer stands among the first writers and thinkers of this 
age. He studies and writes for the sake of the truth. Hence the fol- 
lowing from his pen will be fresh and invigorating to thirsty souls of 
this time. Vol. VIII., p. a33 : 



32 

" The monetary arrangements of any community are ultimately de 
pendent, like most other arrangements, on the morality of its members. 
Amongst a people altogether dishonest, every mercantile transaction 
must be effected in coin or goods ; for promises to pay cannot circulate 
at all when, by the hypothesis, there is no probability that they wilj 
be redeemed. Conversely, amongst perfectly honest people, paper alone 
will form the circulating medium, and metallic money will be needless. 
Manifestly, therefore, during any intermediate state, in which men are 
neither altogether dishonest nor altogether honest, a mixed currency will 
exist ; and the ratio of paper to coin will vary with the degree of trust 
individuals place in each other. 

" There seems no evading this conclusion. The greater the preva- 
lence of fraud, the greater will be the number of transactions in which 
the seller will part with his goods only for an equivalent of intrinsic 
value ; that is, the greater will be the number of transactions in which 
coin is required, and the more will the metallic currency preponderate. 
On the other hand, the more generally men find each other trustworthy, 
the more frequently will they take payment in notes, bills of exchange, 
and checks ; the fewer will be the cases in which gold and silver are 
called for, and the smaller will be the quantity of gold and silver in 
circulation." 



" The pretensions of those who are attempting to drive this country 
back to the barbarism of a metallic basis for our currency are fast giv- 
ing away for want of argument. It is being discovered that all the 
great writers who have analyzed the subject, and viewed it from a sci- 
entific stand-point, came to the conclusion that paper is superior to metal 
for a currency. Even Ricardo, the high priest of the bullionists, the 
father of the present British system, allows this. He says : 

" A regulated paper currency is so great an improvement in com- 
merce that I should greatly regret if prejudice should induce us to re- 
turn to a system of less utility. The introduction of the precious 
metals for the purposes of money may with truth be considered as one 
of the most important steps towards the improvement of commerce and 
the arts of civilized life. But it is no less true that, with the advance- 
ment of knowledge and science, we discover that it would be another 
improvement to banish them again from the employment to which, 
during the less enlightened period, they had been so advantageously 
applied." 

Horace greeley's plan. 

" Let Congress make our greenbacks fundable at the pleasure of the 
holder, in bonds of $100, $1,000, and $10,000, drawing interest at the 
rate of one cent a day on each $100 (or $3.65 per annum), and exchange- 
able into greenbacks at the pleasure of the holder. Now authorize the 
Treasurer to purchase and extinguish our outstanding bonds, so fast as 
it is supplied with the means of so doing by receipts for customs or 
otherwise, and to issue new greenbacks whenever large amounts shall be 



33 

required every one being fundable in sums of $100, $1,000-, or 810,000 
aT aforesaid, at the pleasure of thet holder, in bonds drawing an annual 
interest of $3.65 in coin per annum, and these bonds exchangeable into 
greenbacks whenever a holder shall desire it. 

« Our greenbacks, which are now virtual falsehoods, would be truths. 
The Government would pay them on demand in bonds as aforesaid, 
which is in substantial accordance with the plan on which the green- 
backs were first authorized." 

It appears by a speech of W. W. Allen, Esq., that there had been 
drawn from the people, in the shape of taxes and duties, during eight 
years between the 31st of August, 1865, and the 1st of November 
1873 the amount of $631,488,677, making a reduction of the national 
debt in eight years of $631,488,677, showing that an annual amount of 
$195 113 356 has been drawn from the people in the shape of taxes and 
paid towards the extinguishment of our national debt. This amount was 
over and above the amount drawn from the people to pay all the expen- 
ses of the Government, in addition to the amount required to pay the 
interest on the national debt. . • 

Such a rapid withdrawal of the people's means from their ordinary 
business is quite sufficient to account for the ruin now brought on un- 
told thousands of the American people. . 

For our Government to continue such a policy and go on drawing 
taxes from the people as they have done, to extinguish the national 
debt before it is either due or wanted by those who hold it, is about as 
wise as it was for Pharaoh to expect his people to make bricks without 

^The people could and would willingly have paid the five dollars 
interest on every hundred dollars of the national debt. _ They could 
have paid the interest on the debt with enough of the principal to show 
that they honestly intended to pay the whole amount. 

This they could and would have done if they had been permitted to re- 
tain the tools of their trades ; the amount of currency on which they 
were compelled to depend for their ability to pay the taxes on the cost 

of the war. . ' . ™ , 

I believe I have shown that the policy adopted by our Government 
to hasten a return to specie payments has rendered the attainment ol 
that object more distant and difficult than it was at the close of the war 
of the rebellion. ,, , 

I am now convinced that an opposite policy, one that would have 
legalized all the Government money in circulation at the close oi the 
war, making it convertible into interest-bearing bonds, and recon- 
vertible into currency at the will of the holder, would have established 
justice between the people and the Government, and would have caused 
our currency to appreciate to the value of gold long before this. Lt 
would have left the money, the sinews of war, the tools of trade, in the 
hands of the people, to enable them to meet the expenses incurred and 
make the necessary provisions for the hundreds of thousands of dis- 
banded soldiers thrown back on their homes to find employment or 
starve. 



34 

In conclusion, T would say that we have every reason to hope foi 
our country. But we must not tru«t in the amount of our gold or other 
riches, but in the principles of our Constitution as free people, and in 
the free development of all our magnificent resources. We must turn 
again the tide of immigration which is now leaving our shores. "We can 
do this, as in the past, by continuing to offer a better reward for labor, 
and cheaper land for settlement, by a faithful administration of our 
laws in the interests of the people, and not of classes or monopolies, 
and by trusting in all questions of money and currency to the integrity 
and power of our Government, and not placing ourselves at the mercy 
of foreign capitalists nor submitting tamely to that war of commerce 
which every nation is willing to make upon us, if we do not take effec- 
tual means for our own self-preservation. 



A LETTER ADDRESSED IN 1875. 

To the Editor of the " Evening Post : " ' 

In some of your late issues, 1 find an article by S. S. P., entitled 
" Peter Cooper's New Departure," and an article with a similar title, 
by my old and valued friend, John B. Jarvis. These communications 
allude to the fact that, seventeen years ago, I held it to be unsafe for 
the public welfare, as I now do, to allow banks to incur liabilities, pay- 
able in specie, on demand, by issues of paper and loans many times the 
amount of the specie they held in their vaults, or could obtain from any 
source, for the immediate payment of their notes in gold, on demand. 
This demand was made with all the accompanying disasters of wide- 
spread ruin and inteiTuption of credit and industry, in times called 
"panics." The effect of the panic of 1857, and the causes, are very 
clearly detailed in Mr. Caldwell's work on " Ways and Means of Pay- 
ment "—p. 485. 

Gold is a commodity, and a product of industry. Its value is deter- 
mined, like that of any other commodity, by supply and demand. Why 
not let those who need it pay the price? Why should the necessary 
facilities of the home trade be contracted, whenever there is a demand 
for gold for export? This it is that subjects the whole country, from 
time to time, to a fall or derangement in prices and an interruption to 
business ? Even with our present irredeemable legal-tenders, all must 
see that when gold varies five per cent, in a few days, neither the value 
of these legal-tenders, as measured by other property, nor the rest of the 
property of the country is perceptibly affected. My " New Departure," 
as my friends term it, is the result of observation and experience. I 
should be sorry to be among those who learn nothing from the past. 
" Hard money," or what is equivalent to it, a paper currency at all 
times redeemable in gold and silver, can no longer be relied on to 
answer the wants of this country. But I am as much opposed to an 
irredeemable currency, and an inflated and irresponsible paper money 
as I ever was. Our experience, as a nation, should have taught us by 
this time, by the " panics." of the past and the oft-repeated failures of 



35 

banks, that these banks are utterly unable to redeem their notes in 
specie whenever gold is wanted of them in any large quantities. It is 
evident that there is some intrinsic difficulty about this redemption in 
specie, beyond the power either of banks or of Government to control, 
except by methods not yet adopted by Government. I trust that 
my friend John B. Jarvis and S. S. P. will find, on a more careful 
examination of what I have written, that I am as much opposed, 
to an irresponsible, inflated, paper currency, as I ever was. I am now 
opposed to the present currency, so far as it is irredeemable ; but I am 
also opposed to the policy of withdrawing the currency from circulation, 
until the residue shall be on a par with gold, because that woxild work 
great injustice to the debtor class. I do not believe in the good policy 
of selling Government bonds, as a means of resuming specie payments, 
as it will soon be drained from us again, leaving our paper as it was 
before, irredeemable in gold ; nor in the purchase of silver to take the 
place of the best small currency our country has ever possessed. It is 
a currency that is now serving the country without interest ; and is 
giving back to the whole people whatever is lost or worn out in the 
public service. But let the currency at all times be exchangeable with 
interest-bearing bonds, and let the Government not only make its money 
a legal tender, but receive it for all dues, and we shall hear no more 
either of " inflation " or of " depreciation." This is my doctrine " in a 
nutshell." I believe with Jefferson and many of our wisest statesmen, 
that our genei'al Government is as much bound by the Constitution to 
hold the entire control of all that is allowed as a legal money measure, 
in the regulation of trade and commerce, as they are bound to fix a 
standard for the pound weight or the bushel measxire. That this meas- 
ure of value should be made as unfailing and unalterable as possible. 
And the currency should always compare well with the most condensed 
and valuable form of human labor, as it is now found in gold. But 
after the most mature reflection, I find myself compelled to believe, 
with Benjamin Franklin, " that any other well-founded credit is as 
much an equivalent for labor as gold and silver." He says, what all 
now know to be true, " that paper money, well founded, has great ad- 
vantage over gold and silver, being light and convenient for handling 
in large sums, and not likely to have its volume reduced by demands 
for exportation." " On the whole," he says, " no method has hitherto 
been found to establish a medium of trade equal, in all its advantages, 
to bills of credit made a general legal tender.'''' 

That such a policy is pi-acticable is proved by the fact that the French 
Government has made and maintained a legal tender paper circulation, 
through one of the fiercest and, to them, the most disastrous Avars of 
modern times ; and, having paid a thousand millions of indemnity, their 
paper money is to-day nearly on a par with gold. This is because the 
Government took its own paper for all clues, instead of discrediting it, 
by not taking it, as ours does. They take their paper also for French 
Government bonds, which has resulted in the public debt being mainly 
due to their own citizens, instead of foreigners, as ours is to-day, thus 
becoming a perpetual tax on the resources of the country. 

My efforts to avoid the evils that have befallen the finances of our 



36 

country, will appear in a paragraph from a petition sent by ine to Con 
gress. 

" During the session of the Congress of 1869, 1 had the honor to send 
to every member of the Senate and House of Representatives a plan fol 
the establishment of a currency that all our experience has shown to be 
the best that our country has ever possessed. It only required an act 
of Congress declaring that the legal tenders then in circulation should 
never be increased or diminished in amount, only as per cajyita, with 
the increase of inhabitants of the country. It will now only require an 
act of Congress to make such currency as just and permanent a measure 
of the value of all property and labor, as the yard-stick or pound weight, 
as money, weight, and measure must always exist by governmental 
authority. To make our present legal tenders the best currency in the 
world, it will only require that Congress receive the legal tenders in 
payment for all duties with an amount of currency added that will be 
equal to the premium that gold has borne during the month preceding 
the maturing of all contracts. This plan Avill make it the interest of 
every man to bring legal tenders on a par with gold in the shortest 
possible time." 

The sevei-al quotations of the opinions of eminent men in the history 
of this country, which I gave in my " Letter on the Currency," were 
intended to show by good authority that Congress had a right to borrow 
money on the credit of the United States, and to issue bonds bearing 
interest for the same ; and in this is implied the power to issue a cur- 
rency as legal tender, for this is only another form of the public debt. 
But to incur the great debt of four hundred millions of dollars in the 
shape of a paper currency ; to make this a " forced loan," by making 
this paper a legal tender for all debts as between individuals, and to pay 
it to eveiy one from whom the Government obtained service or material, 
and at the same time to discredit this paper, by refusing to take it for 
the Government dues, and to withdraw forty-four millions of this cur- 
rency from the active trade of the people in the course of two or three 
years, thus embarrassing trade and shrinking values, until a "panic" 
was brought on : all this seems to me a great mistake on the part of our 
Government — not the issuing of this currency, for that was a necessary 
war measure to save the integrity of the Union — but to make this cur- 
rency irredeemable, either in bonds or in gold ; and then to contract it, 
after all values had been measured by this currency for some years, and 
debts incurred which the parties had the right to believe were to be 
paid in good faith, by the same measure as they were contacted — this 
does seem to me not only a great mistake, but a great injustice to the 
people. 

I have urgently recommended that our Government should hold itself 
bound, as an inviolable obligation, to regard every dollar of the legal 
tenders, which were issued to save the nation's life as a loan drawn from 
the people, which the Government was as much bound to pay in full 
measure as ever a debt due from one individual to another. This debt 
was a fair claim on the whole property of the country. When made 
a legal tender, it should have been received by the Government for 
all dues, and the whole amount issued should have been allowed to 



37 

become the permanent standard and measure of all values, as it was for 
a time, letting the natural demands of trade and commerce and the 
gradual growth of the country determine its future value, as compared 
with other commodities — gold, for instance. 

This currency should have for its base of security the solemn pledge, 
already given by the Government, that the $400,000,000 and other 
national currency put in circulation as a war debt should never 
be increased, unless called for by conditions just as imperative as war. 
And further, this pledge should have been followed by an act of Congress, 
to tax the whole property of the country, on which this war debt was a 
lien, to pay the interest of it at some proper rate to those who held the 
currency, but could not use it advantageously in trade, by making it 
convertible into bonds at any time at the will of the holder. Such a 
course would have give an annual assurance that our Government 
meant to pay every dollar of its debt, both at home and abroad. It 
would also have given to our country a degree of stability in the opera- 
tions of trade and commerce, that would in time compensate our coun- 
try for all the losses occasioned by the war of rebellion. 

In conclusion, I would say that ever since paper money was issued 
by any civilized country, except, perhaps, at the very first, it has soon 
grown out of all possible redemption in coin alone. So that it has gen- 
erally been assumed that one dollar in coin would float from three to five 
dollars in paper. But this has only been true in the times of expanding 
credits. As soon as contraction came, for any cause, a " panic ensued ; " 
for it was found that a dollar in cijin was needed for every dollar in paper. 
Why, then, keep up this vain fiction any longer ? It can only serve to 
expand credits to an unwarrantable degi-ee, while it permits another 
class to contract credits suddenly and to a ruinous degree. It leads in- 
evitably, to "panics." Now, it seems to me there is a plain way out of 
all these financial difficulties. If currency is issued only as an equiva- 
lent of bonds, then every dollar of the currency is at all times sustained, 
or " floated," by an equal value of the bonds of the Government. An 
" expansion of currency " can go no further than the actual equivalent 
received by the Government for its bonds. A " contraction of cur- 
rency " can go on no faster than the conversion of the paper into bonds. 
Panics will be impossible, because there will always be a means by 
which real " assets " can be at once converted into money. It is this 
want of " ready conversion " that causes panics and ruins even " well- 
founded houses." I have'said before, that I believe this will bring the 
currency on a par with gold ; but whether it does or not, it is certain 
that we cannot, by any legal enactments, keep our currency on a par 
with gold, without either shrinking its volume to less than the ordinary 
demands of trade and commerce in this country and doing great injus- 
tice to the debtor class, or by a proper policy on the part of the Gov- 
ernment in respect to this currency, to prevent those great fluctuations 
in its value which lie at the foundation of all financial troubles. 

I have lived too long to enter now, at this late day of my protracted 
life, into the mere partisan disputes of the day. I have no other object 
or interest than the welfare of the whole people of my country ; and, 
believing as I do, I should hold myself very much to blame, if I with 



38 

held my feeble testimony in this important crisis of the country, and on a 
question involving such momentous consequences as a sound currency 
and a true financial system. On these we must depend for the future 
prosperity and happiness of the whole industrial class, with whom I 
have ever been in sympathy. I confess to a most profound anxiety for 
all those who, with their best efforts, find life a great struggle for a bare 
subsistence. 

These troubles will be greatly lessened when gold becomes, as it 
should be, only a guide in the exchanges of commerce, as the mariner 
looks at the north star as his best guide over a dangerous ocean. 



THE CURRENCY QUESTION. 

The following address was prepared by Peter Cooper for delivery at 
the meeting of the Union League Club at New York City. It containa 
a full exposition of his views on financial questions. "We recommenc 
its careful reading and consideration : 

Mr. President and Gentlemen of the TInion League Club : 

I find myself impelled by an irresistible desire to call and fix the at- 
tention of every lover of his kind and country on those appalling causes 
that have so effectually paralyzed the varied industries of our people. 
Those causes have been sufficient to shrink the real estate of the nation 
to one-half the amount it would have brought three years ago ; and that 
without having shrunk at the same time any of the debts that had been 
contracted by the use of money authorized by the Government of our 
country. There is nothing that can be more important than to find out 
and remove the causes that are bringing bankruptcy and ruin to the 
homes of millions of the most industrious men of our nation. The 
national policy that has brought .this frightful calamity on our people 
should receive the most thorough investigation and the most decided 
action by the Government of our country. There is but one way of re- 
lief out of all this national trouble and sorrow. The people themselves 
must enforce upon the administration the obligations laid down in the 
Constitution, " to establish justice, and thus secure the general wel- 
fare of the nation." To do this, let us take it out of the power of 
States or corporations to make or unmake the money of the country. 
It is the sole duty of the Government to coin money, as the Constitu- 
tion requires. Let the Government itself, through its Administration, 
be restrained from meddling capriciously with the currency, and only 
under permanent laws and a well-understood and predetermined policy, 
always having reference to the good of the people. 

Let us have a national currency, issued solely by the authority and 
supported in circulation by the taxing power and the solvency of our 
Government. Such a currency should be fixed in volume, as per capita, 
to the amount of the people's money actually found in circulation at 
the close of the war, and it should be made as certain and as permanent 
in value in its measuring power as the yard, pound, and \ ushel, by its 



39 

being made redeemable for all Government taxes, duties, rmd debts, as 
well as a legal tender for all private debts. This currency must be 
always interconvertible with Government bonds at a low rate of interest, 
as compared with active investment. It should be a currency which a 
bank or corporation cannot rightfully issue, enlarge, or contract in its 
own interest, and which cannot be taken from the hands of the people 
by the u ever-shifting balance of commodities " between nations, as is 
the case with gold and silver when used as money. It will not be sub- 
ject to any sudden contractions or expansions, but will be regulated by 
established law, based on scientific facts and principles of a just system 
of national finances. The greenback can be made just such a currency. 
This currency can always be kept on an average par with gold or the 
currency of any other country by the encouragement and the support 
which it will give to the industry and the productiveness of the coun- 
try. It will increase indefinitely the country's exporting power. We 
will then pay our " balances " with other nations with our surplus 
products, and have but little occasion for the use of gold and silver to 
pay balances of trade. We can in no way become an exporting nation 
except by stimulating our own productiveness, diversified and enlarged 
in every direction of human industry, in which our materials are as 
good and abundant as those of other nations, and the labor and skill 
are ready for use if properly encouraged. For this purpose I believe 
it will be wise for us to remove all internal taxation, and rely solely on 
a sufficient revenue tariff to meet the expenses of Government. This 
subject is very much misunderstood or misrepresented by our own ad- 
vocates of free trade. It is the surplus productions of foreign countries 
mostly that reach our shores as imports, and it is also the surplus cap- 
ital of the importers and the foreigners that is employed to bring them 
here. Hence it is but right to tax this " surplus " for the absolute 
wants of our own domestic industry and capital. This is precisely what 
a tariff accomplishes. It taxes the importer and the foreigner chiefly, 
who must find a market somewhere; and those of our people who will 
buy and use foreign products, who leave our own good raw materials un- 
used, and our own domestic laborers unemployed. This is violating the 
first law of nature — self-preservation. Let us take care of our own 
people here at home as the first duty of our own Government. And 
let us not make the great mistake of the governing classes in France, 
England, and Germany, where the wages of the operatives and working- 
men are reduced to a bare subsistence. 

It is this ignorance or want of patriotism that stands in the way of 
the public weal, both in the management of our finances and the adop- 
tion of a j udicious tariff. The people alone can vindicate their rights 
and secure their own welfare by taking an intelligent and proper in- 
terest in the administration of their own Government. Let them re- 
quire from this Administration a return to the principles of public 
justice and equal rights. Let the Government be required in some 
proper way to restore to the people the tools of their trade and com- 
merce, which have been so unjustly and cruelly taken from them. Let 
there be provision made for the return of the whole of that currency 
found in circulation at the close of the rebellion, which was worked out 



40 

and paid for by the people in the labor, material, and service which tb«>y 
had rendered to the Government during our struggle for the nation's life. 
It was a currency which had lifted the American people into a state of 
unexampled prosperity, never before known in this or any other coun- 
try, and which can be restored to the people by the issue of greenbacks 
paid out for the necessary expenses of Government, for the execution 
of great necessary international works, such as the Northern and South- 
ern Pacific railroads, which, when made, will strengthen the bonds of 
the Union, and open a vast country, with its untold wealth, for the en- 
terprise and labor of the people. I have sounded these notes of en- 
couragement, warning, and advice time and again, because I believe they 
are for the peace and happiness of our country. At my advanced age 
T have no personal ambition or motive left but the welfare of mankind 
and the prosperity of my beloved country. If it were the last word I 
should utter with my dying breath, I should warn the people of this 
country against the insidious wiles of professed politicians, who are 
seeking for the spoils of office and the attractions of power — men who 
are ready to lend themselves to all special and partial acts of legislation, 
if they can only advance their own individual interests. Such men 
oppose " civil service " because it will curtail their political patronage ; 
such men barter the rights, the prosperity, and even the bread of the 
people, in order to share in the spoils and the temporary gains which 
are thrown into the hands of a few by a pernicious system of banking, 
of which the periodical panics of our country bear a frightful record. 
They are the natural outgrowth of the same injurious system. 

My arguments will be confirmed by a reference to the facts stated in 
the following letter in relation to the currency by F. E. Spinner, the 
former United States Treasurer. Mr. Spinner says that there was put 
in circulation, in all the forms of six per cent., five per cent., and 
3.65 per cent., of legal tender money, $1,152,924,892, besides the 
seven-thirties, $830,000,000, which Mr. Spinner says were intended, 
prepared, and used as currency. This amount had been paid out as so 
many dollars, and had become the people's money, which the Govern- 
ment was then and forever bound to receive from the people as legal 
tender dollars for every form of taxes, duties, and debts. The failure 
of the Government to do that duty has cost the nation thousands of 
millions -of dollars. It will be recollected by many members of this 
club that we were favored on a former occasion by Prof. White, of 
Cornell University, with an account of the losses sustained by the peo- 
ple of France by the use of the assignats authorized by that Govern- 
ment. I have always regretted that my esteemed friend, Prof. White, 
had not gone far enough into the true history of the rise, progress, and 
use of the assignats of France, to see that the injurious losses occa- 
sioned by them did not arise from an improper action of the republican 
Government, but by the combined powers of the internal and external 
enemies of the Republic. This will appear by the following facts : The 
assignats of France were based on the confiscated property of the clergy 
and nobility, in which both the clergy and the nobility had a deep interest, 
that led them to denounce the assignat as based on theft and outrage. 
There was another royal party that united in declaring that their landa 



41 

iiad been taken without any of the forms of law, and therefore the 
title still remained in the clergy. The parties all united in declaring 
that the assignats were utterly without basis to secure their redemption. 
The parties never ceased to agitate war on the credit of the assignats. 
But finding the Revolution too strong for them, and that its cause was 
being so successfully strengthened by conquering the enemies of liberty 
and of the nation, that other nations were yielding to its power, and 
that its armies were victorious, and that its principles, as developed by 
the constitution and laws, were such as reason and humanity approved, 
history tells us that all. the enemies of the new French Government 
united in an effort to destroy the power of the new Government by cir- 
culating counterfeit assignats in every direction. The counterfeiting 
commenced in 1792 in Belgium and Switzerland, and was used exten- 
sively as the best means of destroying the power of the Republic. It 
was found by the nobility that Belgium and Switzerland were too much 
in sympathy with the revolutionists to be trusted. They then ex- 
tended their operations to London, where they found more scope and 
greater opportunities for uninterrupted work. History charges that 
England lent her aid by allowing " seventeen manufacturing establish- 
ments in operation in London, with a force of 400 men, in the produc- 
tion of the assignats." 

It was found that 12,000,000,000 of counterfeit francs had been cir- 
culated in France, when only 7,800,000,000 of francs had been issued 
by the Government, showing that the danger of an over-issue was from 
the enemies of the Government, and not from the Government itself. 
The assessed value of the property on which was based the 7,860,000,000 
of francs was, in 1795, 15,000,000,000, showing that as long as the con- 
fiscation of property was maintained by the Government the assignats 
had good security for their redemption. 

It is more than probable that we shall see again what are called '* pros- 
perous times," when the banks have annihilated our greenback cur- 
rency, and have substituted their own money, on the old and false pre- 
tence of a " specie basis," which makes their money " as good as gold " 
until the gold is really wanted. But I warn my countrymen that this 
will be a baseless prosperity, that can only last while there are any 
securities or property that can be pledged for loans, the loans them- 
selves being puffed up under the conceit that they are payable in gold ; 
then another crash will come, and we shall have the same scenes of 
desolation and suffering that we have experienced as a people for the 
past three yaars. ' I do most earnestly beseech the American people to 
to see to it that their chosen rulers are men imbued with the spirit and 
letter of the Constitution, which, after a great struggle, was enacted 
" to establish justice, promote the general welfare, and secure the bless- 
ings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity." 

Peter Coopkb. 



AN OPEN LETTER 

TO 

THE PKESIDENTOF THE UNITED STATES 

BY 

PETER COOPER. 

New York, June 1st, 1877. 

Honored Sir: 

Allow me to offer you my heartfelt thanks for the wise and 
independent course you have adopted in the discharge of the responsible 
and difficult duties that you have been called upon to perform. The 
deep interest you are manifesting in the nation's welfare has already 
sent a thrill of- hope and joy into the heart of suffering millions through- 
out our country. They are looking to you with anxious hope that you 
will urgently recommend and insist upon the " establishment of justice " 
in the dealings of the Government with the people ; as that is the only 
possible way by which the general " welfare of the nation can be pro- 
moted." 

Your noble course has, tbus far, inspired the people with the hope 
and trust that you will, in the providence of God, be our country's Moses, 
to lead the people from a threatened bondage that now hangs over the 
liberties and the happiness of the American people. 

This bondage has its manifold centre and its secret force in more 
than two thousand banks that are scattered throughout the coun- 
try. All these banks are organized expressly to loan out their own 
money and the money of all those who will entrust them with 
deposits. These loans are made to men whose business-lives will 
soon become dependent on money borrowed from corporations that 
have a special interest of their own. Such a power of wealth, under the 
control of the selfish instincts of mankind, will always be able to control 
the action of our Government, unless that Government is directed by 
strict principles of justice and of the public welfare. The banks will 
favor a course of special and partial legislation in order to increase their 



43 

power— "for even the good want power"; they will never cease to ask 
for more, as loDg as there is more that can be wrung from the toiiino 
masses of the American people. 

Such a power should never he allowed to go out from the entire and 
complete control of the people's government. The struggle with thi<s 
money-power, intrenched in the special privileges of banks, has been 
going on from the beginning of the history of this country. It has en- 
gaged the attention of our wisest and most patriotic statesmen. Frank- 
lin, Jefferson, Webster, Calhoun, Jackson, have all spoken of the danger 
of such a power and the necessity of guarding against it. 

In the opinion of Thomas Jefferson, the Constitution has made this 
subject clear, plain, and positive. He says : " Bank paper must be sup- 
pressed, and the circulation must be restored to the nation, to whom it 
belongs." 

The great delusion and the snare of the banks is " a specie convertible 
paper," which they can never convert when the specie is most wanted. 
On this point Benjamin Franklin declares that a national "paper money, 
well-founded, has great advantages over gold and silver, being light and 
easy to handle in large sums, and not likely to have its volume reduced 
by demands for exportation." "On the whole," he says, "no method 
has hitherto been discovered to establish a medium of trade equal in 
all its advantages to bills of credit made a general legal tender." 

John C. Calhoun declares that, "after bestowing the best reflection I 
can give the subject, that no convertible paper is suitable for a currency. 
It is the form of credit proper in private transactions between man and 
man, but not for a standard of value, to perform exchanges generally, which 
constitutes the appropriate function of currency, or money." Then, on page 
87, he says : " No one can doubt but that the Government credit is better 
than that of any bank- more stable and more safe. . . . Bank-paper is 
cheap to those who make it, but dear, very dear, to those who use it. 
On the other hand, the credit of the Government, while it would greatly 
facilitate its financial operations, would cost nothing, or next to nothing, 
both to it and the people, and would, of course, add nothing to the cost 
of production, which would give every branch of our industries— agricul- 
ture, commerce, and manufactures— as far as its circulation might 
extend, great advantages both at homo and abroad ; . . . and I now 
undertake to affirm, and without the least fear that I can be answered, 
that a paper issued by Government, with the simple promise to receive 
it for all its dues, leaving its creditors to take it, or gold and silver, at 
their option, would, to the extent it could circulate, form a perfect paper 
circulation which could not bo abused by the Government ; that it would 
be as uniform in value as the metals themselves. And I shall be able to 
prove that it is within the Constitution and powers of Congress to use 



44 

anch a paper in the management of its finances, according to the most 
rigid rule of construing the Constitution." 

The present Secretary of the Treasury, speaking in the Senate, 
when the subject of regulating the currency was under consideration, 
declared it to he a fact, that "every citizen of the United States had 
conformed his business to the legal-tender clause." That Senator fur- 
ther declared, as appears by the "Congressional Record," that " if tbe 
bondholder refuses to take the same kind of money with which he 
bought the bonds, he is an extortioner and a repudiator. . . . 
There is no such burdensome loan negotiated by any civilized nation in 
the world as our five-twenty bonds if they are to be paid in gold." And 
yet these very six per cent, bonds, that were issued under a law that 
made them payable in the currency of the country, have by a most cruel 
and unaccountable change in the law, been made payable in gold — the 
very bonds which had been sold at from forty to sixty dollars in gold for 
one hundred in currency, thereby causing a debt that now hangs like a 
millstone on the neck of the nation. It should always be remembered 
that debt, in all the ages of the world, has been the most effectual 
means for holding the mass of mankind in a species of enslavement. 

Within my own recollection unmarried white men could be sold for 
debt in the State of Connecticut ; so that debt is a species of slavery, as 
commerco is a kind of commercial war. It is a war of interests, as all 
nations are using their highest arts to buy as cheap and sell as dear as 
they can. 

Our Government can only regain its former prosperity as a nation by 
adopting a similar national policy to that which has made and protected 
the industries of France. 

One of the causes that brought on the Revolutionary War, as will 
appear by the following statement, were the laws that were passed by 
England expressly to deprive her colonies of the right to manufacture 
for themselves. 

" The first attempt at manufacture in the American colonies was fol- 
lowed by interference on the part of the British Legislature. . . . 
In 1710, the House of Commons declared that the erecting manu- 
factories in the Colonies tended to lessen their dependence on Great 
Britain. In 1732, the exportation of hats from province to province, 
and the number of apprentices, was limited. ... In 1750, the erec- 
tion of any mill or engine for slitting or rolli-ng iron was prohibited. 

. . . In 1765, the exportation of artisans from Great Britain was 
prohibited, under a heavy penalty. ... In 1781, utensils required 
for the manufacture of wool or silk were prohibited. ... In 1782, 
the prohibition was extended to artificers in printing calicoes, muslins, or 
linens, or in making implements used in their manufacture. . . . Io 



45 

1785, the prohibition was extended to tools used in iron ana steel manu- 
facture, and to workmen so employed. ... In 1799, it was so ex- 
tended as to embrace even colliers. 

11 The war of the Revolution of our own country was brought on by 
a war of commercial interests. It was a war that showed a determina- 
tion on the part of tbe mother country to keep her colonies entirely de- 
pendent on England for all forms of manufactured articles. Laws were 
enacted to prevent the colonies from manufacturing out of their own 
good raw materials things indispensable for their own use, and necessary 
to give employment to those who have nothing to sell but their own 
labor." 

Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, and the Revolutionary fathers, were 
men who could see how utterly impossible ' it would be for the American 
people to buy anything cheap from foreign countries that must be bought 
at the expense of leaving our own good raw materials unused and our own 
laborers unemployed. 

Our Constitution has declared that Congress shall have power to 
make all laws that shall be necessary and proper, to lay and collect 
taxes, duties, imports, excises, to pay the debts and provide for the 
common defence and the general welfare of these United States. Also 
" to borrow money on the credit of these United States." 

It was by this constitutional power vested in Congress that all forms 
of Treasury notes were issued and used as so many dollars of legal 
money of the country. At the close of the war of the rebellion, our 
Government found itself encumbered with promises to pay that which it 
did not possess and could not command, only as the amount could be 
drawn from the people in some form of taxation. The promise to pay 
should never have been made. It should have been a promise to re- 
ceive instead of a promise to pay tokens of debt which the Government 
had been compelled to pay out as money in its struggle for the nation's 
life. It was a currency that had proved itself, as President Grant had 
declared it to be, " the best money that our country had ever possessed, 
. . . that there was no more of it in circulation than what is required 
for the dullest business season of the year." 

These facts being established by a condition of unsurpassed national 
prosperity that prevailed throughout our whole country at the close of a 
great and terrible war. After such a demonstration of the strength, 
wealth, and power of a nation, there was no good reason for acts of 
legislation avowedly to strengthen the credit of a nation that had car- 
ried on such a war and obtained such a victory. 

What must the American people think when they come to know and 
understand that a governmental policy has been adopted that has taken 
from the people their currency that was furnished by the people without 



46 

cost, and turned into such an oppressive debt as now "burdens and para- 
lyzes the industries of the country ? 

The amount of currency so found in circulation at the close of the 
war should never have been allowed to increase or diminish, only as per 
capita with the increase of the inhabitants of the country. 

Such a currency should have been made receivable for all forms of 
taxes, duties, aud debts. That would have made our national paper 
money as much more valuable than gold in proportion as it would be 
more easily and cheaply handled in large sums. 

Our national currency must be made receivable for all purposes 
throughout the country, and interconvertible with three per cent. 
Government bonds; it would then, like the consols of England, soon be- 
come an ever-strengthening bond of national union. Such a currency 
would have been worth more to the American people than all the gold 
mines that have ever been discovered on the continent of America.* 

I hold our Government bound to give back to the people their small 
currency that was costing them nothing, and then call in the silver cur- 
rency that has been put in its place at a cost of $31,733,400 paid for sil- 
ver up to April 20, 1877. This silver should be immediately withdrawn, 
and used in the purchase of foreign bonds, thus saving for the American 

* The following is a statement of the interest of money paid by the United States 
since the close of the war of the rebellion. The following statement shows that $1,422,- 
057,577 has been paid in interest in 11% years : 

Principal— Interest-bearing $1,717,642,130 

Non-interest-bearing 473,923,757 

$2,191,565,887 
Interest due on above 33,092,616 

$2,224,658,503 
Less cash in Treasury 154,299,886 

Debt at May 1, 1S77 $2,070,358,617 

Debt at July 7, 1866 2,783,425,879 

Seduction since July 1, 1868 (10 10-12 years) $713,067,262 

Since the close of the war, or from July 1, 1865, to April 1, 1877 (11% years), the in- 
terest on the public debt was $1,422,057,507, or $121,000,000 per annum 1 

The universal cry over the land is for employment. Whan well employed the people 
are well clothed, well fed, and well housed. The adjustment of the flsoal question— sot 
for one class, but for tho masses— must be made ere prosperity is ours. The recall from 
Europe of our gold bonds (by sale of commodities, placing them at low interest) and sub- 
stituting greenbacks for national bank-notes, would remove grievous burdens, providing 
employment by stimulating our depressed industries. 

Will President Hayes inaugurate this just policy, insuring general prosperity and 
spontaneous " resumption," or the par of paper with gold 1 

The true remedy for national relief from the enslavement of debt, with its burde* of 
taxation, is the substitution of greenbacks for national bank-notes. 

The national banks have received since 1833 twenty-one millions of dollars Interest 
on bonds deposited with the Government. 



47 

people an amount of interest, if compounded, that would pay the national 
debt several times in one hundred years, and at the same time give the 
country a more convenient currency, which would he more than paid for 
by the amount that would he worn out and lost by its use. If silver 
change is ever needed, it can be had with only the cost of coining it by 
the Government, as nearly all the silver produced in the country will 
go into coins whenever the Government will coin it without cost to its 
owners. 

I find myself compelled to agree with Senator Jones where he says 
that " the present is the acceptable time to undo the unwitting and blun- 
dering work of 1873." . . . "We cannot, we dare not, avoid speedy 
action on the subject. Not only does reason, justice, and authority unite 
in urging us to retrace our steps, but the organic law commands us to do 
so, and the presence of peril enjoins what the law commands." 

I have ventured this long letter in the firm belief that the adoption of 
a permanent, unfluctuating national currency, as before stated, equal to 
the amount actually found in circulation at the close of the war, and that 
amount should never be increased or diminished only as per capita with 
the increase of the inhabitants of our country — such a measure of all in- 
ternal values, with a revenue tariff of specific duties to be obtained from 
the smallest number of articles that will give the amount needed for an 
economical government — such a national policy would introduce pros- 
perity once more into the trade, commerce, and finances of this country. 

Note.— " Expansion versus Contraction.— The following statistics 
from the London Economist demonstrate the fact that the expansion of 
French Government legal tenders has kept pace with the accumulation of 
specie, and materially develops the home industries of that country : 

" Oflegal tenders in April, 1869, the circulation was 214 millions dol- 
lars, and in April, 1876, 494 millions, being an increase in seven years of 
280 millions, or 130 per cent. ! 

" Of specie and bullion in December, 1869, the stock was 247 millions 
dollars, and in November, 1876, 432 millions, or an increase in seven 
years of 185 millions, or 75 per cent. ! 

" The striking prosperity of French industries under the above fiscal 
policy augurs strongly for an expansion equal to the amount found 
in circulation at the close of the war, and against a contraction." 

Our Government has, from its origin, neglected to perform one of the 
most important duties enjoined on it by the Constitution, where it says 
that Congress shall have power not only to coin money but to regulate 
the value thereof. This can be and should have been done by an Act of 
Congress to regulate the value of money by fixing the amount that can 
be legally collected as interest for the use of money. 



48 

When such an Act has been provided to prevent extortionate de- 
mands for the use or interest on money, aud when the law has been re- 
pealed that is now paralyzing the country with the terrible fact that 
some fifteen hundred millions of dollars now due from the people to the 
banks, with all the other debts that are to become due in 1879, are by law 
made payable in gold, then the way will be opened for a restoration of con- 
fidence and a permanent financial relief. The law contracting the cur- 
rency is now taking from the people their legal money, costing the Gov- 
ernment and the people nothing, and then converting this same currency 
into a national debt, for which the people are to be taxed for the Dext 
thirty years. It should never be forgotten that the first sixty millions of 
Treasury notes were issued and made " receivable in payments of duties 
on imports a lawful money and a legal tender." 

The fact that the sixty millions then issued did continue receivable 
at the Treasury on a par with gold, when gold was selling at 235 in 
currency, this fact is proof positive that had the Government made all 
the greenbacks full legal tender, instead of sending them out partially 
demonetized and repudiated, they would never have fallen below par. 
It was the partial demonetization and the contraction of the currency 
that has so effectually destroyed confidence and dried up the sources 
of both production and consumption. The people are deprived of their 
currency which had for years formed the life blood of the trade and com- 
merce of our country. 

My efforts in all that I have written have been to call and fix the at- 
tention of the American people on those truths and principles so grand- 
ly set forth and declared in the Preamble to the Constitution, formed for 
us by the Fathers and founders of a Government intended to establish 
justice as the true and only sure means by which the general welfare of 
the American people can be substantially promoted. 

Hoping and believing that your best efforts will be given to secure 
for our beloved country the blessings of a good Government, 
I remain, yours, with great respect, 

Petee Coopeb. 

Note. — The following quotations will show the monstrous absurdity 
of a national policy that would make all the industries of a nation to de- 
pend on an article like that of gold, the price of which no government 
or individual can control, as it bears one price to-day and no man can 
tell what price to ill be offered for it io-morrow. 

To the above we append the following suggestions from John Earl 
Williams, President of the Metropolitan Bank of this city, in the same 
direction : 

"I would suggest: Thai Congress assume, at once, the inherent 



49 

sovereign prerogative of a government ' of the people, by the people, and 
for the people,' and exercise it, by furnishing all the inhabitants of the 
United States with a uniform national currency ! Surely the people, 
and the people only, have a natural right to all the advantages, emolu- 
ment, or income that may inure from the issue of either $1,000 bonds 
with interest, or $10 notes without, based on the faith and credit of the 
nation 1 

"This principle, simple, clear, and undeniable, ought to be recog- 
nized as fundamental, and the only safe and proper basis on which may 
securely rest all the circulating medium of the country, for the sole bene- 
fit of all the people, and not, as now, for the profit of a class of stock- 
holders, however deserving they may be in all other respects. 

" To carry into effect this principle — to substitute United States 
notes for bank-notes — take away, as soon as practicable, and for ever, all 
circulation from banks. 

" They would do a strictly legitimate business as banks of discount 
and deposit; knowing that whatever leads to the prosperity of the 
whole people must be beneficial to the banks ; but leaving the right 
where it belongs, to the United States Government, to supply the whole 
circulating medium of the country. 

" In this connection, we must remember that banks are the creatures 
of law. The laws which created them may, by virtue of rights reserved, 
be amended, altered, or repealed. 

" To those who are disposed to complain of the change as a hardship, 
one is tempted to ask what natural right a dozen stockholders have to 
receive notes from Government to circulate that any other dozen men do 
not possess? 

" One thing is certain, that the national debts can never be paid by a 
governmental policy that shrinks the currency, destroys values, para- 
lyzes industry, enforces idleness, and brings wretchedness and ruin to 
the homes of millions of the American people. It is equally true that 
Americans can never buy anything cheap from foreign countries that 
must be bought at the expense of leaving our own good raw materials 
unused, and our own labor unemployed. * It should be remembered that 
neither gold, silver, copper, nickel, or paper are money without the stamp 
of the Government upon it. The Constitution has made it the duty of 
Congress to coin the money of our country and regulate the value there- 
of, and fix a standard of weights and measures, as the only possible 
means by which commerce can be regulated between foreign nations and 
among the several States." 

Peter Cooper. 



THE DANGERS OF A WAR OF COMMERCE 

AND THE NECESSITY OP A 

TARIFF AND OF AN UNFLUCTUATING CUR. 
RENCY TO NATIONAL PROSPERITY. 

By Peter Coopee. 



Cl The experience of nearly eighty-one years has taught me that the 
greatest and most important question that now demands the considera- 
tion of the American people is, -whether we, as a nation, are willing to 
know the truth, and let the truth make and maintain our freedom, or 
whether we have deliberately determined to follow the advice of men 
and nations that have a direct and an immediate interest to mislead and 
deceive us. For we may rest assured that all trade between foreign 
nations and our own is a kind of commercial war. It is a war of inter- 
ests, as all nations are using their highest arts to buy as cheap and sell 
as dear as they can. All are trying to buy their raw materials in the 
cheapest market, and to sell their manufactured labor for the most that 
can be obtained for it. This they are doing by the use of all the arts, 
both fair and foul, that human ingenuity can devise. 

" There has been nothing comparable with the evils that have and may 
result to nations from a war of commerce. Invasion of armies is at- 
tended with waste of property, destruction of life, and suspension of 
all fair exchange of the products of labor ; but, with the return of 
peace, men can again combine their efforts, and in a few years all is as 
it had been before. Such, however, is not the case with the substitu- 
tion of foreign trade, for the home commerce of the products of our 
own land and labor. Under the artful and alluring fascinations of the 
powers of foreign trade, association for mutual benefit dies away ; intel- 
lect declines, and the life's blood of a nation slowly ebbs away, render- 
ing recovery from day to day more difficult, and closing finally in the 
material and moral death of a nation. 

" It can be shown that the*wars of commercial interests are more in- 
sidious, and are more to be dreaded than wars of conquest. There is 
nothing in all history that admits of more complete demonstration than 
the fact that the wars of commercial interests, carried on by England 
alone, have led to and have caused a greater destruction of life and 
property, during the last seventy years, than has been occasioned by all 
"the wars of conquest that have taken place in the civilized world during 
that period of time. It is now less than seventy-five years since a 
companj', chartered by Great Britain, commenced a mercantile war on 
the people of Hindostan, a country with its then 150,000,000 of in- 
habitants, famed for manufacturing the finest quality of goods, and for 



51 

bein« in possession of the riches of the East. History tells us that 
'in no part of the world has there been seen a greater tendency to vol- 
untary association for a mutual exchange of labor than once existed in 
Hindustan . . . Each village had its distinct organization, under 
which the natives had lived from the earliest times down to a recent 
date • • Revolutions might occur, and dynasties might succeed 

each other'; but, so long as his own little society was undisturbed, the. 
simple Hindoo gave himself no concern about what might happen at 
the capital. . . . Though often over-taxed and plundered by rn- 
vadin* armies, the country continued both rich and prosperous 'until 
an East India Company, chartered and sustained by the power of Great 
Britain, commenced a war of encroachments on the trade and commerce 
of that 'countrv. This war of commercial interests led to a war of con- 
quest, which, after the battle of Plassey, had established British power 
in India ' The country became filled with adventurers ; men whose 
sole object was to accumulate fortunes, by any means, however foul, 
as was shown by the indignant denunciation of Burke in the Parlia- 
ment of Great Britain. Fox declared, in a speech on the East India 
Bill that < the country was laid waste with fire and sword, and the 
land once' distinguished most above others by the cheerful face of fra- 
ternal government and protected labor, the chosen seat of cultivation 
and plenty, is now almost a dreary desert, covered with rushes and 
briers, jungles and wild beasts.' ... The misgovemment of the 
English was carried to a point such as seemed hardly compatible with 
the existence of society. They forced the natives to buy dear and sell 

" Macaulay says : ' The misgovemment was carried to such an extent 
as seemed hardly compatible with the existence of society. They forced 
the natives to buy dear and sell cheap. They insulted, with impunity, 
the tribunals, the police, and the fiscal authorities of the country. 
Enormous fortunes were thus rapidly accumulated at Calcutta, where 
30 000 000 of human beings were reduced to the extremity of wretch- 
edness' They had been accustomed to live under tyranny J but never 
tyranny like this. Under their old masters, they had one resource- 
when the evil became insupportable, the people pulled down the Govern- 
ment. But the English Government was not to be shaken off. lhat 
Government, oppressive as the most oppressive form of barbarian des- 
potism, was strong with all the strength of civilization. It resembled 
the government of evil genii rather than the government of human 
tyrants. . . . Under the title of Zamindars, a landed aristocracy 
was created and held accountable for the collection of taxes.' Ful- 
lerton, a member of the Madras Council, says : ' Imagine the revenue 
leviable through 100,000 revenue officers ; collected or remitted at their 
discretion, according to the occupant's means of paying, whether trom 
produce of the land or his separate property ; and in order to encourage 
every man to act as a spy on his neighbor and report his means oi 
paying, that he may save himself from all extra demand ; imagine all 
the cultivators of a village liable at all times to a separate demand, in 
order to make up the failure of one or more individuals of the parish. 
Imagine collectors to every county, acting under the orders of a Board, 



52 

on the avowed principle of destroying all competition for labor by a 
general equalization of assessments, seizing and sending back all run- 
aways to each other. Lastly, imagine the collector, the sole magistrate 
or Justice of the Peace of the county ; through the medium of whom 
alone, complaint of personal grievance suffered by the subject can reach 
the Superior Court. Imagine at the same time every subordinate 
officer employed in the collection of the land-revenue to be a police 
officer, vested with the power to confine, put in the stocks, and flay, 
any inhabitant within his range, on any charge, without oath of the 
accuser or sworn recorded evidence in the case.' . . . Under 
this state of things, ' the works constructed for irrigation have gone to 
ruin, and the richest lauds have been abandoned.' 

" Capt. Westmacot tells his readers that in many places the longest 
under British rule, there is the largest amount of depravity and crime. 
Campbell, one of the most distinguished of British poets, characterizes 
the course of their policy in India prophetically when he says : 

" ' Foes of mankind ! ' her guardian spirits say, 
' Revolving ages bring the bitter day, 
When heaven's unerring aim shall fall on you, 
And blood for blood these Indian plains bedew.' " 

" ' The immolations of an Indian Juggernaut,' says a recent writer, 
' dwindle into insignificance before it, and yet to maintain this trade 
the towns and cities have been laid in ruins.' The middleman system 
of Ireland and of the West Indies was transplanted to those countries 
Of the East, to which Macaulay declares that ' the English Government 
became as oppressive as the most oppressive form of barbarian des- 
potism.' The poor Hindoo was not allowed to make salt from the 
waters of the ocean. Every form of tax and exaction was forced on 
that people in order to drive them to send all their cotton and wool to 
England (the great workshop of the world), to be converted and re- 
turned. Sir Robert Peel says : ' The effects in India exhibit them- 
selves in such a ruin and distress that no parallel can be found in the 
annals of commerce.'' The great city of Dacca, that only seventy years 
since contained 90,000 houses, and exported millions of pieces of the 
finest quality of goods, is now a mass of ruins. The same authority 
says : ' For the accomplishment of this work of destruction, the chil- 
dren of Lancashire, England, were employed fifteen to seventeen hours 
per day during the week, and until twelve o'clock on Sunday, clean- 
ing and oiling machinery, for which they received two shillings and nine 
pence per week. The object was to underwork the poor Hindoo, and 
drive him from the markets of the world.' The pound of cotton, 
costing in India one cent, was passed through British looms, and sold 
\o the Hindoo for from forty to sixty cents. ' Thus England was 
enriched, as India became impoverished. Step by step, British power 
was extended, and everywhere was adopted the Hindoo principle that 
the sovereign, as proprietor of the soil, was entitled to half of the gross 
produce.'' While these exorbitant local taxes were expended among its 
own people, the burden could be borne ; when these taxes were drawn 
from the people and expended on absentee landlords, the burden brought 



53 

desolation and premature death to millions of the people of that country. 
History tells ns that one-half of the labor of that people ran to waste 
for the want of employment. 

" The exactions of British power in China, made to force the sale of 
opium in that country, are stated to cause the dejth annually of 
500,000 of the Chinese people, besides a tax of nearly $20,000,000. 
Campbell says, ' the immolations of an Indian Juggernaut dwindle into 
insignificance before it.' The ruin of Portugal was effected by the Gov- 
ernment having been induced to adopt a British commercial policy that 
broke up the harmony of the agricultural and mechanical interests- 
interests that had for so long a time made Portugal so rich and prosper- 
ous. ' It is less than two hundred years since the merchants of London 
petitioned their Government to restrain the manufacture of cloth in 
Ireland,'' Of all the 1,700,000 slaves imported into the British West 
India Islands, only 660,000 were found living on the day of emancipa- 
tion. This was the result of a war of commerce. The planters on those 
islands had been deprived by law of all right ' to refine their own sugar, 
or to introduce a spindle or a loom, or to mine coal, or to smelt their own 
copper,' thus depriving the people of the islands of all power of associ- 
ation, and exchange of labor and harmony of interests, without which 
ruin falls to the lot of every community. The British policy that was 
forced on the Island of Jamaica alone cost the lives of hundreds of 
thousands of men, in order that a few absentee owners might live in 
splendor on the Island of England. The policy of forcing the whole 
labor of a community into the single pursuit of making sugar effectu- 
ally prevented the growth of towns and schools, and impoverished the 
people and the land. All communities require the families of the black- 
smith, the carpenter, mason, and of other tradesmen, to consume a 
large part of the agricultural product of the soil, to secure them pros- 
perity, and to enable them to leave offal to enrich the land that feeds 
them. ' On the Island of Jamaica, with a population of 320,000 black 
laborers, and with inexhaustible supplies of timber, that island has 
been without a single saw-mill up to I860.' Out of the amount paid 
to the British Government by the people thirty years since for the pro- 
ducts of its 320,000 black laborers, the Home Government took no less 
than $18,000,000, or almost $60 per head, and this merely for superin- 
tending the exchanges. The negroes imported into Jamaica were no 
more barbarian than those brought to Virginia and North Carolina ; 
yet, while each of the negroes imported into the latter States is repre- 
sented by seven of his descendants, the British Islands present but two 
for every five they have received. But a century since, Portugal and 
the West Indies were England's best customers. What are they now ? 
All impoverished by a policy that has broken up their own home com- , 
merce, and has subjected their countries to the heaviest kind of tax — 
the tax of transporting their heavy products to great distances, to be 
exchanged for the light products of other countries. 

" ' The first attempt at manufacture in the American Colonies waa 
followed by interference on the part of the British Legislature. . . . 
In 1710, the House of Commons declared that the erecting manufac- 
tories in the Colonies tended to lessen their dependence on Great 



54 

Britain.' 'In 1732 the exportation of hats from province to province 
and the number of apprentices was limited. ... In 1750. the 
erection of any mill or engine for slitting or rolling iron was prohibited. 

. . In 1765, the exportation of artisans from Great Britain was 
prohibited, under a heavy penalty. . . . In 1781, utensils required 
for the manufacture of wool or silk were prohibited. . . . In 1782, 
the prohibition was extended to artificers in printing calicoes, muslins, 
or linens, or in making implements used in their manufacture. . . . 
In 1785, the prohibition was extended to tools used in iron and steel 
manufacture, and to workmen so employed. . . . In'1799, it was so 
extended as to embrace even colliers.' 

" The war of the Revolution of our country was brought on by a war 
of commercial interests. It was a war that showed a determination on 
the part of the mother-country to keep her colonies entirely dependent 
on England for all forms of manufactured articles. Laws were enacted 
to prevent the colonies from manufacturing out of their own good raw 
materials things indispensable for their own use, and necessary to give 
employment to those who have nothing to sell but their own labor. 
The war of the Revolution was a war of resistance' to a war of com- 
merce then being forced by the mother-country on the colonies. Our 
conquest of a country did not deliver us from the consummate power of 
highly-educated British diplomats, whose business it has always been 
to find the weak places in surrounding governments, and to so control 
the legislation of those countries as to make them tributary to the 
wealth and power of Great Britain. These diplomats, after having 
secured for their own manufacturing interests more perfect protection 
and more perfect mechanical powers than any other nation possessed, 
have enabled their Government to gain greater advantages by their war 
of commerce on our own country than they could have gained if the 
colonies had remained entirely under their own control. Such has 
been the consummate ability that foreign diplomacy has been able to 
exert in a war of commerce that has brought our country in debt to 
foreign Governments to an amount the interest on which is now equi- 
valent to a large proportion of the agricultural export of the country. 
This state of things must continue or grow worse, unless our Govern- 
ment will raise its whole revenue out of duties on imports, and relieve 
the country from all forms of direct taxation, and by that means 
encourage the application of knowledge, economy, and labor, in a course 
of ettorts to supply our own wants by our own industry, out of our own 
good raw materials, that can be put into useful forms with as small an 
expense of human labor here as in any other part of the world. Thus 
it will enable the country to win back its independence of foreign debt 
Dv P a yi- n g it off as fast as the amount can be raised from the duties on 
imports. 

" Our Government can only hold its power as a free system hy avoid- 
ing in future all special, partial, or class legislation, and by the enact- 
ment of only such general laws as are necessary and indispensable to 
establish justice. Justice can only be established ' and the general 
welfare promoted ' by the Government holding an entire control over 
all that is all* wed or intended to measure or weigh the different forms 



55 

and values of labor in its course of exchange from one peruon to another 
Hence the absolute necessity for the establishment of a j ust and unyield- 
ing system of money, weights, and measures. This is indispensable to 
facilitate the business of the country. If paper is to be coined into 
money the amount should be limited and so regulated that the sum 
could only be increased in regular proportion with the natural increase 
of the inhabitants of the country. All Government paper should be 
a legal tender in the payment of all private debts that were contracted 
during the time that paper is allowed to circulate as money. All 
persons should have the privilege of paying duties on imports, and also 
all contracts to pay gold, by adding to the amount in legal tenders a 
sum sufficient to be equal to the average premium that gold had sold 
for during the month preceding the maturing of the contract — the 
Government to advertise the rate of premium on the 1st of every 

month. 

" The people of our country should never forget that one of the great 
causes that led to the American Revolution was the determination 
on the part of Great Britain to force its manufactures on the colonies, 
to be paid for by sending raw materials to England ; thus keeping them 
dependent by preventing them from manufacturing for themselves. 
This policy of England has drawn to its little island the wealth of every 
country that has allowed itself to become the subject of its policy and 
power. It is still trying to persuade the people of this country to run 
their ploughs in competition with the mighty machines in England, where 
a single engine is doing the work of a thousand horses. To see the 
folly of yielding to a British policy, we have only to look at the effects 
produced on our country during the war with England. At that time, 
when our foreign trade was cut off, labor was in demand and money 
abundant ; furnaces and mills were built, and all actively employed ; 
wages were high, and our national debt small. Four years later, our 
country was persuaded to yield to a British policy of Free Trade. At 
once all was changed ; mills and furnaces were stopped, labor went 
begging, our poorhouses were filled, the prices of land declined, money 
became scarce, and interest high ; the rich who held mortgages became 
richer, and the poor and those who were in debt, were ruined. At 
that time the American farmer had no foreign or home market for the 
surplus product of the country. Complaints grew and increased until 
things grew so bad that in 1828 our Government found it necessary to 
adopt what I call a true American system — a system of Free Trade — a 
trade that extended to all parts of our own country in all articles that 
are the product of our own soil or of American labor. By this system 
duties were laid on imports that soon gave new life and energy to the 
trade and business of the country. The public debt was soon paid off, 
and prosperity became universal. 

" By degrees, between 1834 and 1842, the tariff was again repealed 
by the influence of southern and pro-slavery politicians, whose whole 
wealth was invested in cotton and slaves. The mills were again stopped, 
furnaces closed, lands fallen to half-price, the sheriff at work, States 
repudiating their debts, the Treasury unable to borrow at home or 
abroad, and bankrupt laws passed by Congress. In 1842, the true 



56 

American System was again tried ; and in less than five years the pro- 
duction of iron alone rose from 200,000 tons to 800,000 tons. Pros- 
perity was again universal, mines were opened, mills were built, and 
money plenty, and the public and private revenues greater than ever. 
Once more, in 1846, the British policy of Free Trade was adopted by 
repealing our tariff, and, notwithstanding the discovery of gold in Cali- 
fornia, money was as high as ever. British iron came in and gold went 
out. In 1857, the culmination was reached, and a crisis came on. 
The Treasury was again nearly bankrupt. In three years, emigration 
fell below the point of twenty-eight years before, and our own exports 
fell off to a mere nothing. Such have been the effects of yielding to 
a policy recommended by men and nations having interests to serve that 
are at war with all the best interests of our own country. 

" A war of commercial interests is not peculiar to % England alone. It 
has been the habit of all trading nations since ' naught said the buyer.' 
They will all continue to buy in the cheapest market and sell in the 
dearest as long as men do not love their neighbors as they do themselves. 
There are thousands of those now engaged in foreign trade whose for- 
tunes depend on filling the country with foreign goods. There are 
other thousands who are holders of mortgages, who hope to buy in the 
property for the face of their mortgages, or for half its present value. 
And that they will do as soon as they can induce our Government to try 
another experiment in what they call free trade. The policy of these 
persons, who are all clamorous for free trade, would deprive millions of 
men of their means of living by mechanical employments, and drive 
them into competition with the farming and agricultural interests of 
the country, making the mechanics competitors of the farmers ; instead 
of consuming, as they now do, ten times as much of the agricultural 
product of the country as is now sold in all Europe. 

" It would be as unwise for our country in time of war to govern the 
movements of armies by the advice of our enemy as it would be for our 
Government to allow our national policy to be controlled by the advice 
of the trading nations of Europe, who will always consult their own 
interests, entirely independent of any interests of ours. It is well to 
remember that there is nothing that can be said to be purchased cheap 
of foreign countries that must be bought at the expense of leaving our 
own labor unemployed, and our own good raw materials unused. I 
advocate the cause of our manufacturing interests, because they secure 
to the farmer his surest and best market for the agricultural product of 
the country, and beca\;se experience has demonstrated the fact that the 
surest way to maintain our independence, and cheapen goods to the con- 
sumer, is to foster the home productions of our country, and give diver- 
sified employment to our people. And I advocate an American system, 
because I desire the political power and the financial honor of the 
nation to be maintained and vindicated before the world. This can be 
most effectually accomplished by making ourselves independent as far 
as our own soil and climate and good raw materials will enable us to 
produce the articles we need ; and this they do with as small an ex- 
pense of labor as it would require to produce the same articles in any 
other part of the world. I advocate a policy that will maintain the 



57 

National Government and pay the nation's debt out of duties on im- 
ports. The heaviest duties should be laid on all articles of luxury, and 
the lightest duties on all articles that will aid in securing a diversified 
employment to our people. 

v " There is nothing else that our Government can do that will so effect- 
ually stimulate and develop all the best energies of a free people as 
will the adoption of a just, uniform, and unyielding system of money, 
weights, and measures. It is greatly to be regretted that our Govern- 
ment failed in its very commencement to perform the most important 
duty enjoined by the Constitution. They should never have allowed 
the individual States to issue paper money that was to all intent bills of 
credit. It has been the inflation of irredeemable paper money that has 
so raised the price of all property and labor that we now tempt the 
world to sell us everything, and we have made everything with us too 
dear to sell with profit in return. Free Trade with foreign nations 
must, where all things have been made unequal by the use of paper 
money, prove in the future, as it has in the past, a delusion and a 
snare. It must in the future, as it has in the past, bring panic, 
pressure, and ruin, to untold thousands made bankrupt by the change 
of value in all kinds of property. This must be the result of leaving 
our own labor unemployed and our own good raw materials unused." 

But it should ever be borne in mind that besides the great disadvantage 
which always results to a nation by depending abroad for the supply 
of its wants, for any product of the soil, or of manufacture, which can 
as well, if encouraged, be produced at home, we have to encounter also 
" a drain of specie" which, if it be our only money and legal tender, 
subjects the value of the paper, based on coin, to great fluctuations in 
value, owing to this drain which such a commerce brings on the country, 
and thus becomes a source of incalculable loss and misfortune to the 
country liable to such a drain of its money. But a national paper cur- 
rency of our own (greenbacks), made a perfect legal tender, and always 
interconvertible into bonds, would be a complete protection against a 
drain pf our money, and leave our gold and silver, as the rest of our 
productions, to pay all "balances of trade." The "American policy" 
is, therefore, a Tariff, with a " domestic, unexportable, and well-founded 
currency? Editor. 



LABOR PROSPERITY IN ENGLAND EIGHTEEN YEARS FROM 1797 TO 1815. 

Extract from Marvin Warren' s Work on American Labor. 

Sir Archibald Alison, author of the History of Modern Europe, 
says: "The next eighteen years of the war, from 1797 to 1815, were, 
as all the world knows, the most glorious, and taken as a whole, the 
most prosperous which Great Britain had ever known. Ushered in by 
a combination of circumstances the most calamitous, both with refer- 



53 

ence to external security and internal indu&tiy, it terminated iE a blaze 
of glory and flood of prosperity which have never since the beginning 
of the world descended upon any nation. Prosperity universal and un- 
heard of pervaded every part of the empire. Our colonial possessions 
encircled the earth ; the whole West India Islands had fallen into onr* 
hands ; an empire of sixty millions of men in Hindoostan acknowledged 
our rule ; Java was added to our Eastern possessions ; and the flag of 
France had disappeared from every station beyond the sea. Agricul- 
ture, commerce, and manufactures at home had increased in an unparal- 
leled ratio ; the landed proprietors were in affluence ; wealth to an un- 
heard of extent had been created among the farmers ; the soil, daily in- 
creasing in fertility and breadth of cultivated lands, had become almost 
adequate to the maintenance of a rapidly increasing population ; our 
exports, imports, and tonnage had more than doubled since the war 
began." 

What caused this prosperity ? Exactly the same thing in kind that causes 
the present French prosperity. This eighteen years of English prosperity 
commenced in 1797, when the Bank of England was authorized by the 
Government to suspend specie payment, and continued just so long as it 
was not insisted upon by any party that the bank should be required 
to pay specie, and ceased immediately as soon as that requirement 
was seriously urged. The money of England during that eighteen years 
was irredeemable paper money ; it was rag baby in its nature. The very 
kind of money that the ministers of finance in our country tell us is a 
sore evil to have. True, like our present greenback money, it was in- 
ferior to the French paper money, because, it was not a full legal tender 
for all debts in the country. Of course, then, it depreciated some in 
value as compared to gold, and did not have that full and complete ben- 
eficial effect, in dispensing its benefits to all interest and to everybody, 
as it otherwise would, and as the French money does. But like the 
French money in one respect it was not redeemable in specie on de- 
mand, and hence it could be and was issiied in quantities for the most, 
part to adapt itself to the necessities of labor and business. Take notice, 
American laborers, that this period of English prosperity lasted just the 
eighteen years of time that the money of England was not disturbed by 
redeemability in specie, nor seriously threatened so to be, and not any 
longer. So that English experience and French experience as to what 
causes prosperity accord one with the other, and they both are to the 
effect that prosperity comes at once, upon the liberation of the money 
or currency of the country from being redeemed in specie, and then 
issued in quantities suited to put the labor of the country all into active 
and profitable employment. 

And take notice, also, just what kind of prosperity that was. It was 
the prosperity of labor ; all honest, useful labor. It was " prosperity 
universal and unheard of," and it " pervaded in every part of the em- 
pire." " Agriculture, commerce, and manufactures at home had in- 
creased in an unparalleled ratio." And take notice, American farmers, 
the landed proprietors were in affluence, and wealth to an unheard of 
extent had been created among the farmers. 

And I say this, also, that there was not in that English prosperity 



59 



his military power, and the vexy e ^t e nce 01 ^.^ 

"T.^n 1815 the war closed by the capture of Napoleon at Waterloo 
tory of England, tell what took *»£^£i f^prfce* of 

rz^ ; Tairr^^55:- £ |p^ 

SSSfBX -'SSSiStSS «£5 to g et t 

bodies 01 stai viu Parliament The discontents, as usual, the 

and demanded reform o the Paiiiament. x memorab le first of 

SEWS Z"ufer^ d bfnfes, arenas the Bank o,-En g . 

Ration for the S« ■Stri^S »r l ' f TI/ano 
"itce'we universal, affeeting both the great interests of land and 



''peel and his Skyloek backers pressed the matter of the specie resumption 

&ES33S *■ ££ r^ -s ^u^tt^thl in" : 



60 

was reduced from 160, ^00 to 30,000. The very farmers that had accu- 
mulated wealth to an unheard of extent in the eighteen years of suspen- 
sion, now became bankrupt and penniless. 

Wendell Phillips, in a letter to the New York Legal Tender Club, 
dated August 23, 1875, though slightly inaccurate in two or three his- 
torical dates and some other forms of expression, draws a faith fu. 
sketch of this English resumption, as compared to our own now in 
progress but not completed. The following is an extract of the 
letter : 

" History is repeating itself. England never knew more prosperous 
years than from 1800 to 1820, during which she had neither gold nor 
wished to have it, nor promised to pay gold to any one whatever. All 
that while she extended and contracted her currency without any re- 
gard whatever to gold. Her enormous trade and expenditures were all 
paper, resting on credit and nothing else. We had similar prosperity 
during the war, and after on the same terms. In 1820, England, lis- 
tening to theorists, tried to put this new wine into old bottles, and 
dragged her business back to methods a century old — to specie. Bank- 
ruptcy, the very history of which makes the blood cold to day, blighted 
the empire. It took half a generation to recover from the mistake. 
No man can to-day begin to show that such suffering was necessary, 
that it achieved any good, or that it effected any change which could 
not have been as well made without it." 

The object was not to have the paper currency redeemed in specie ; 
there was really no desire or expectation of that ; but simply that the 
paper money be driven from circulation, by making this impossible 
requirement of specie payment in respect to it, thus leaving but very 
little currency in circulation of any kind, and forcing down prices of 
labor and property, real estate especially, to almost nothing, rendering 
debtors unable to pay their debts, that their estates might be bought in 
at forced sales, or voluntai-y to prevent the forced, at prices ruinous, 
and quite likely still leaving them in debt and without means to pay. 

The scheme worked like a charm. By it under the forms and sanc- 
tion of law, the property of the English people was gathered up in vast 
sweeping accumulations, and handed over to the nobility, and thus 
was the genius of the British society, its distinction of nobility and 
vassalage, restored intact. 

The specie resumption law of this country, passed in January, 1875, 
is in substance and design a copy of the British law of 1819, above 
mentioned. Bear in mind the excuse is to redeem' the paper currency 
in specie, the real object is to drive from circulation the currency of the 
country, reduce prices, and so rob the debtor class. 

But let us look at the matter. What will the national bank-notes be 
redeemable in when the greenbacks are withdrawn and burned up ? 
The bank-notes must be redeemable in something, else they will be 
worthless, for they are not a legal tender for debt, as the greenback 
money is. At present the bank-notes are redeemable in legal tender 
greenbacks, and that makes them good. But the greenbacks withdrawn 
and burned up, and then what? Why, the bank-notes must then be 
redeemable in specie of course, as the resumption law provides. And 



61 



where will the banks get the specie to redeem with ? Some cf the 
strongest of them will be able to get it, and continue their business 
But ft looks to us that the bank-note circulation will be contracted in- 
stead of enlarged under the operation of this specie resumption law. 
Contraction h?s been the effect of it so far, and we have every reason to 
believe it will be more and more so up to the time of resumption. lhe 
requirement to redeem in specie causes this, lhat was the effect in 
England, as shown in the foregoing extract from Doubleday s Histoiy 
The contraction under our specie resumption law up to November 1 
1876, was $30,710,732 of national bank-notes and $14,464,284 ot 
Greenbacks, besides $20,910,946 more of greenbacks deposited in the 
treasury of the United States for the retirement rf^^^™"* 
making a total contraction of the currency of $66,085 962 up to the 
date mentioned, and the contraction and destroying of the greenback 
money is still going on. . . , 

But when this contraction has gone on for a certain time and instead 
of a diffused and large credit pervading the country, we have all the 
loanable capital concentrated in the great money centres and controlled 
by the banks, then expansion of credits will be the order of the day 
Bank credit will be thrown out in unlimited quantity in the shape of 
bank-notes, ostensibly redeemable in specie, but really not £ but al 
secured as loans on the property of the borrower. 1 hen the banks and 
the money lenders have only to contract these loans and the securities 
being suddenly thrown upon the market, sweeps the property of the 
many into the hands of the few. This is the game of all banking. 

VVe purpose not to be an alarmist, and believe we are not. We 
think we have no motive or desire whatever to create misapprehension, 
or groundless fear or unjust distrust of the integrity or capacity of those 
in authority. But if this greenback money, constituting as it now does 
more than half of the currency of the country, be withdrawn from ^cir- 
culation by the first of January, 1879", the time fixed for resumption 
there will be no enlargement of the bank-note circulation to take its 
place, or at least a very inadequate one, and probably a contraction in- 
stead and at that time there will be precipitated upon the people of this 
country a financial disaster and loss of estates like unto and probably 
equal to that which was brought upon the English people in 1823 
when more than four-fifths of the land-owners of that country were 
robbed of their possessions. All our principal finance laws passed in 
the last eleven years seem to us framed with a direct reference to a 
<n-and future crisis of that kind, to be brought about by contraction ot 
the currency. We do not believe there has been a single annual report 
of our Secretary of the Treasury in all that eleven years that did not 
contain one or more recommendations, equally monstrous with that one 
just quoted from the last report, seeming to us to ^ve thejA^xest 
dictates of common reason, common justice, and practical expenence, 
and aiming for a future crisis such as above mentioned. 

I now ask the reader to again peruse carefully the progress of the 
English crisis from its beginning, in 1815, to its «2T"^Mi2S 
the time of resumption, as given in the above extract from Doubleday * 
History, and compare therewith, as far as we have progressed, our 



62 

own experience, embracing the last eleven years of our history, again 
inspecting withal the table of bankruptcies. It will be found that 
we are travelling the same road exactly, and unless our people demand 
a halt, or restrain the Government by popular demands, we are destined 
to the same end. The only difference is, that the game here has to 
proceed slower and more cautiously, more shifts and devices are 
needed, and more newspaper aid has to be employed here to befog 
the people than was required in England, because history throws 
more light on the subject now than it did then, and because the people 
here have more to do in the cause of Government than they had in 
England ; and moreover, by reason of our greater natural resources, our 
country is able, without total and immediate ruin, to endure a greater 
amount of robbery. I do not believe there was ever such a horrid sys- 
tem of usury practised amongst men as preys upon this country at this 
very time. 

The crisis proceeds here as it did in England, with increasing bank- 
ruptcy of business firms, throwing laborers more and more out of em- 
ployment. According to reliable statistics, failures in bankruptcy in 
this country have had a general increase for the last eleven years, being 
nineteen times as much in 1876 as in 1865. And every increase of 
bankruptcy has been marked by an increase of pauperism, suffering, 
death from destitution, disaffection, political and governmental corrup- 
tion, and a failing of the confidence of our own people in our own re- 
publican institutions. 

Specie basis .or specie payments should be something of great value to 
cost so much suffering. What is it, therefore, and what is it for ? 
This specie basis, or specie payment, is a something written down in 
the books of British science, and from thence copied into ours. Specie 
is a something that a very few wealthy men, of almost any country, can 
buy up and hold at will, substantially the entire stock in that country, 
as is done now in the United States. This being done, then if there be 
no law for any legal tender paper money in the country, but all the 
money, in order to be good, must be either specie or redeemable in 
specie, these few men will hold entire control of the money of the coun- 
try, and can control all business and prices, and virtually own nearly 
everything in the country sooner or later, as always is done where this 
specie basis fraud exists. 

Again, this same specie is good to make watch cases, watch chains, 
and gold and silver dishes of, and to work into an innumerable variety of 
ornaments for persons, male and female, and otherwise to gratify the 
whims, vanity, and pomp of the wealthy classes. And to what extent 
it may be required for this purpose in any one country depends upon 
the changes of fashion and the ability of men to indulge in it, either of 
which is unstable as the waves of the sea. Likewise in times of war, 
danger, or financial uncertainty, this specie is good to hoard up, and is 
hoarded by men who are able, from motives of both security and specu- 
lation. 

And besides these things occurring within the country, the like casu- 
alties all ever the world, together with the uncertainty of the yield of 
the mines, and the ever-varying laws of the different countries in mono- 



63 

tizing and demonetizing gold and silver and other materials, make the 
presence and availability of specie, either for money or the basis of cur- 
rency, one of the most unreliable things in this unreliable world. 

Yet British science calls this most fickle commodity the most reliable 
for a money basis. This policy will do for the British nobility as a 
most excellent fiction by which to turn systematically to themselves the 
earning of the British laborers, as is constantly done in that country. 
It may also do for American politicians or office-seekers (who, as we are 
aware, are excusable if they have no ideas of their own) to prate about, 
so as to please the money-dealers and get their money support. But an 
American farmer, who is entitled to vote, and has a farm that he desires 
to keep and not have filched from him, and every other person identified 
with the labor interests of the country, should consult his own common 
reason and his practical observation of things, and not lay aside either 
of these to be misled and ensnared by British fiction and clap-trap. 

To know anything about this subject of money it is necessary to pause 
ri«ht here and consider definitely what specie basis or specie payments 
mean. Most people think they do understand it, and yet do not exactly. 
Very many think that because we, the greenback men, oppose specie 
basis we oppose specie money. This is furtherest possible from the 
truth. We do not object to specie money. The greenback principles, it 
thoroughly carried out, will make specie abundant in the country. 
Nor do we very seriously object to having our paper money promise to 
be redeemed in specie. The dependence on redemption m specie as 
an exclusive basis, so called— this is what we do object to most stren- 
uously, and having the value of currency depend in the least degree 
upon its being so redeemed in specie. That is, the paper currency, 
whether so. redeemed or not, should be a full legal tender for all debts 
throughout the country, the same as specie, so as to keep it par with 
specie°in value. Owing to the fickle nature of specie there is, m fact, 
no such thing as specie basis for the currency of any commercial nation. 
Specie basis means no basis at all, but the absolute power of a few men 
to decide in their own interests how much currency the people shall 
have for business, or whether any at all or not, with power to change 
the amount to suit their own speculative purposes. 

To illustrat still more completely the real nature of this specie basit 
idea, take, for example, our own country, the United States. Now any 
one year of prosperous business throughout this country would be 
attended always by two things : one is the activity of its money passing 
from hand to hand, the other is growth. In other words, if we have a 
single year of active, healthy business, we are ready the next year to do 
a still greater business. Business grows with its growth. Growth of 
business requires a corresponding growth in the quantity of money, 
just exactly as a tree that grows vigorously one year by the nourish- 
ment of the earth and air, received through the sap, requires a greater 
quantity of that sap the next year to continue the growth and health ot 
the tree. Hence we see, in the Creator's order of things, as a tree 
grows larger its roots, fibres, and foliage reach forth deeper and higher 
and broader, that they may gather and transmit the necessary increase 
of sap and nourishment to the whole tree. Circumscribe those roots 



64 

and fibres, or otherwise withhold the necessary increase of s ip required 
by nature, and you dwarf the tree or kill it. 

Precisely so it is with nations. Prosperity, if we have any, is 
attended with growth, and a necessity for an increase of mo aey. With- 
hold the increase of money and you will dwarf the nation, or kill it, 
and niurder the inhabitants. Under a specie basis order of things 
what has the supply of specie to do with the wants of the nation for 
more or less money. Is it anywhere revealed to us that mines and job- 
bers will always give forth a supply just suited to the business necessi- 
ties ? Nay, verily. But in proportion as you attempt to actually base 
the currency on specie will the jobbers grasp the specie and keep it out 
of legitimate business. Thus you limit the money of the country by 
an arbitrary, irresponsible power, that feels no sympathy with the 
money wants of the nation. The theory, therefore, of basing the money 
of a country upon specie, the most liable of all matei'ials to be snatched 
away for luxury, vanity, and speculation, and all the more sure to be 
so snatched away as the more we attempt actually to base money upon 
it, is a diabolical idea, a wholesale, murderous conception, and contrary 
to the Creator's order of things. To say that such materials, gold or 
silver, or both together, constitute the best basis for currency, is &s 
contrary to the truth as to say that a brothel is the best place to pre- 
serve chastity, or that the taking of strong drink is the best way to 
keep temperate, or that a deep-sounding bed of quick-sand is the best 
foundation for a house. 

England herself does not in reality base her currency on specie, nor 
could she without bringing all business to a dead stop in a very short 
time. She just mixes enough of this specie basis fiction in her finances 
to continually or periodically divest the laboring classes of their earnings 
for the benefit of the nobility. But for the real basis of value to her 
currency, she makes the notes of the Bank of England, as well as her 
coins, a full legal tender for the payment of debts, but not the notes of 
the other banks. From this we see that even in England specie basis is 
a mere fiction, a false pretence. 

We have already seen what a terrible siege of robbery, destitution, 
suffering, and death the Government of England made its people pass 
through from 1815 to 1823, to reach specie basis, or specie payments, 
the pretended haven of rest and happiness. And what was the result ? 
The following statement being condensed from an article in the St. Louis 
Commercial of March 23, 1876, shows what that specie payment bliss 
amounted to when obtained : 

"At the time of Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo, in 1815, the Bank 
of England and the country banks had an issue of $270,000,000. The 
cry of resumption being raised, the banks set about a sharp contraction 
of both their issues and their discounts. Between 1815 and 1823, they 
reduced the volume of their issue 33 per cent. 

" The crisis was at its height from the 12th to the 17th of December, 
1825. Up to the night of the 14th the Bank of England had restricted 
its issues ; but at that time, becoming sensible of its error, it resolved 
to make common cause with the country, and issued circulating notes 
to the amount of $25,000,000. This policy was crowned with the most 



65 

complete success. The panic was stayed almost instantly. Oedit was 
revived, and a needless and protracted period of suffering was averted. 
This remedy consisted in a profuse issue of irredeemable paper money 
to the amount of $25,000,000. 

" Similar but less disastrous panics happened in 1836 and 1839, and 
from then to 1843 general commercial stagnation prevailed throughout 
England. 

"In 1844, Peel's restriction act was passed by Parliament, forbidding 
the bank to issue beyond 14,000,000 pounds sterling on the Government 
stocks, except she has the gold in her vaults, pound for pound. 

" Three years after this act was passed, in 1847, the next panic ensued. 
The extreme pressure began September 23d and continued until October 
23d, when the terrible game was played out. The Queen's Government 
ordering the act suspended and the currency expanded, two millions of 
dollars, with the assurance that plenty more could be had, cured this 
panic instanter. 

" In 1857 the most unexpected and disastrous crisis they had ever 
experienced swept across to them from our shores. To stop this panic 
the bank act was suspended again, and the currency — paper money — 
was expanded nearly $34,000,000, in excess of the limit, which then 
stood at nearly 15,000,000 pounds. 

w In 1866, they had it again. The Chancellor of the Exchequer 
said the excitement was without parallel. On the evening of this black 
Friday, the ministry advised the suspension of the bank act, which was 
done the next morning, and in the course of five days $60,000,000 of 
paper money issued to the entire relief of business and restoration of 
confidence." 

From the above it will be seen what a beautiful thing this forced 
specie payment was when reached through the horrible robbery of the 
English people in 1823. After it was reached it was maintained with 
increasing suffering and misery for two years and seven months, and 
then December 17, 1825, a suspension had to take place, and $25,000,000 
of irredeemable paper money had to be issued to stay the wi'etchedness. 
And again another author, Hon. Isaac Buchanan, says : " England 
seems to the world to have survived the process of a return to specie 
payment, although how she has done so, if gone into in detail, would be 
the saddest and most harrowing record of human suffering. 
At the end of thirty years (in 1839) the revenue, or in other words the 
propei'ty of the country, got fairly broken down, under the insidious 
operations of the British money system." Further the honorable 
gentleman says that, in the 1847 panic, thousands died of starvation in 
the cellars of the manufacturing and seaport towns of Great Britain. 

Such are the effects of specie basis, or specie payments, so called, a 
thing that the English Government pretended to think of such great 
value, and so desirable, as that, in order to reach it, she dragged her 
people from a condition of " prosperity universal and then unheard of," 
through eight years of unheard-of bankruptcy, starvation, and misery, 
and then, when reached, the result was a continuation of the same hor- 
rors, until relieved again in two years and seven months by a temporary 
return to suspension of specie payments and the issue of irredeemable 



66 

paper money. And then again, after twenty years more of miserable 
existence on the part of the labor of the country, we find the laborers 
dying by thousands, of starvation, in the cellars of the manufacturing 
and seaport towns. And still these scenes have been followed by suc- 
cessive horrors of a similar kind at intervals ever since, relieved 
in every instance by a return to suspension and an issue of irredeemable 
paper money. 

And still further, as late as 1875, we find the Chamber of Commerce 
of the British kingdom unanimously adopted a resolution praying the 
Chancellor of Exchequer to appoint a commission to inquire, amongst 
other things, "into the constitution and actual management of the 
Bank of France, as compared with the constitution and actual manage- 
ment of the Bank of England; as to the points of difference in the 
constitution and actual management of those banks respectively, to 
which may be attributed the crisis and panics which occur periodically 
in the English money market, and do not occur in the French money 
market at all." 

Now, it is to be borne in mind that there has been no specie pay- 
ments in France since 1870, or at least no law yet in force requiring it; 
and yet the paper money of that country, unlike that of England, is all 
a full legal tender, and all the time substantially par with gold. This 
is the one essential point of difference between the two systems of money 
of those two countries, the French paper currency, or money, is a full 
legal tender for the payment of all debts, public and private, within the 
realm, and can, therefore, issue continually, and does issue, in sufficient 
quantities for the business of the country, without any depreciation of 
value. Whilst in England, the bills of none of the banks, except the 
Bank of England, are a general legal tender for debt, but depend for 
their value on being redeemed in specie, or in the Bank of England 
bills ; whilst the bills of the Bank of England, although a legal tender, 
are limited usually to such amount as can be redeemed in specie. That 
is, in short, the English paper money is, to some extent at least, specie 
basis monej , whilst that of France is irredeemable, rag-baby stuff, essen- 
tially such as England had in time of her great prosperity, and yet such 
as the prevailing authorities of this country and England call a perni- 
cious evil, but which the commercial or mercantile interests of England 
are longing to have established in opposition to the specie basis fiction 
of the money craft of that country. 

Note. — The foreign balance of trade, in our favor at present, is, in 
this instance, not the resiilt of prosperity at home, but of lack of em- 
ployment and poverty among our people. Our bankruptcies and bank- 
rupt sales being of greater number than any former year, and laborers 
more unemployed than ever, would seem to indicate that we have not 
been producing more, but have been selling abroad cheap, and buying 
less from abroad, because of increased poverty among laborers. That is, 
we sold cheap abroad because our own people were too much unem- 
ployed and poor to buy and use what were to them the necessaries of 
life and of business. And our own factories, to a very large extent, are 
unable to be run at all, only because, having changed hands, the present 
owners got them almost for nothing, and are able to get work-hands on 



67 



xv a ««,1„ nf nrices What a triumph is this of governmental 

fokLTecontmv P The real test of prosperity is, whether or not labor 
^ W empbyed and well P aid. And labor was never so much un- 
PmnloTed and never so poorly paid in any one previous year as in 18/6, 
Xowin. a constant dedine in our industrial and financial condition, 
desifite^of constant prediction tc the contrary by our Government func- 
tionaries and their Shylock admirers. 

Xd furthermore, the withdrawal of the greenback money from cir- 
cultSo;, as re omniended by our Secretary of the Treasury, and Presi- 
cuiauon, «» greatly increased prostration of labor 

"Si fand W ^te b n^o? specie away from us, provided we 

^^^^^J of the Treasury, in time of the war 
and before the commencement of this eleven years ^^5*^ 
authority from Congress to receive deposits of money in the l^asury 
from our people, payable back on ten days' notice m our own lawful 
naiSr money, wih interest at five per cent. This would have been on 
the likT principle of the interconvertible bond, now urged by the green- 
back advocates 9 Had the plan of Mr. Chase been carried out, it would 
have enabled our Government to obtain constant credit among our own 
busmen to the amount of several hundred millions of dollars, much 
to the benefit of the men themselves, and the saving of gold bonds being 
ssued to foreigners. But Congress was full of bankers, as it always is, 
and they wanted these private deposits to bank on themselves ; for 
which reason the Secretary was permitted to receive only one hundred 
' millions in this way, which was eagerly deposited. t 

One Sectary of the Treasury under President Grant s administra- 
tion belong continued effort, funded five hundred millions of oux 
national detain gold bonds and sold them in the foreign market, when 
nad our people been provided with legal tender paper money, so as to 
have kept our labor employed at home, after the French manner we 
could have paid off the whole five hundred millions m less time han the 
Sec -etarv was fundin* it. The policy seems to be to foster gold debts 
a^ra^rprostration of the 'industries at home, because this double 
fo tering tenuis to increase our debts, public and private "^g"* 
as we a?e -oing to base our currency all on specie we must ^^e these 
foi-rign debts to take the specie away from us in the ^J^™% 
then we will be without specie, without money basis, without money ot 
cou^r and without price for anything; then will we be m good condi- 
tio for our merciful P British nobility benefactors and their generous co- 
unters on these shores, to take us, with this little heritage of ours int. 
their kind care and keeping, both for ownership and goveniment civ 1 
and military. Then we shall have nothing to do but to hew then wood 
^awThe^atcr, cultivate their soil, and fight such battles as they see 
fit, for their own glory and amusement, to set in array ^forus. 

The demonetizing of silver, as was done by act of Congiess 01 reoru 
an 12 187 ^ is a part of this same scheme, taken in connection with 
i2uin« of foreign gold bonds, to get the country destitute of specie, 
a^d hi°that comfitiol force specie payments, and *£**££?£ 
ing transfer of the people's property to a moneyed few, m the same 



68 

manner as was done in England, and to establish the same condition of 
things here as there, to wit : a noble few to own the country and rule 
it, and a vassalage to perform the work. If this is the destiny intended 
for us by the founders of our Government, I have labored under a great 
mistake all my life. 

Marvin Warren. 

Note. — In place of over-producing, we have imported, in the last ten 
years, over one thousand million dollars ($1,000,000,000) in excess of 
what we were able to pay by sales of exports, proving positively that 
over- importation is one cause of our financial troubles, and under-pro- 
duction to be the real cause, instead of over-industry. These " bal- 
ances " must have been paid by sending our bonds abroad, thus alien- 
ating our national debt, and having to pay the interest abroad. 

To reduce our imports two hundred millions annually is giving our 
laboi'ing and producing classes annually two hundred million dollars of 
additional employments. This can easily be done by means of proper 
tariff law, without cost, and without borrowing. 

A large increase of duties on foreign industries of our own kind, is no 
increase of taxes upon our own people, but the reverse, being an increase 
of wealth to them, as our Government requires only a certain amount of 
revenue for its support, which is as large under low as under protective 
duties. The difference and gain to our people is the increase of em- 
ployment and gold, corresponding with the reduction made in the 
amount and gold cost of our imports. 

The unparalleled prosperity of France, fresh from her disastrous war, 
can only be attributed to her wise protective policy, which results.in 
having annually a balance of trade of over one hundred millions in her 
favor. 

I favor a free list and low duties for all necessary productions im- 
ported, which we ourselves do not produce and sell. 

A tariff for revenue, and not for the protection of American indus- 
tries, would quickly cause our great republic to be reduced to the level 
of European countries — for workingmen, a country to migrate from to 
seek elsewhere work and a living. 

There are two ways to renew specie payments. One is by contract- 
ing and destroying our present and only money and continue low duties, 
and leave all in poverty, so that eventually we cannot import for the 
want of funds, which would necessarily largely reduce imports and give 
us the balance of trade. The other way is a large increase of duties, 
which would cause a like large reduction of imports, and cause a large 
demand for American employments and productions at home, to supply 
the reduction made in imports. 

Our Congress should make our paper currency as good as gold, a 
legal tender for import duties, and at the same time largely increase the 
duties, to cover the loss in the difference of value in gold and currency, 
and to largely reduce imports below trade exports. 

Whenever our nation's annual exports (exclusive of gold debt pay- 
ments sent abroad) will not fully meet and pay all foreign demands, 
both for purchased imports, debt, and interest annually due abroad, then 



69 

we shoul 1 increase duties to retrench and economize our nation's for- 
eign extravagance in purchasing imports. Then our country could not 
be impoverished as now, either of its own employments or its own 
gold. 

When either of the real producers of our country's wealth, manufac- 
turers, miners, or farmers, are impoverished by foreign competition, 
then all are made to suifer, because each one's productions add to the 
one total production of our country. 

There is only one quick way to possess an abundance of specie, and 
that is this way, which is a very old one — Do not spend so much specie 
with other nations for foreign productions. Manufacture and produce 
more for ourselves. This will give our people moi'e specie and more 
employment and wealth. A high tariff alone will do this. 

The protectionists of foreign industries in Congress are easily known. 
They are always in favor of taxing heavily American productions three 
hundred per cent., and would tax tea and coffee, which our poor people 
must have and should not be taxed, because it will not increase our em- 
ployments, as duties on foreign industries would do. 

Our American people cannot support all other nations' industries and 
our own beside, as low duties now cause us to do. A tariff law for 
American industries alone would dissolve this ruinous and unnatural 
division of our market, as was found necessary to do after the bank- 
ruptcies of 1837 and 1857, to our country's immediate relief from de- 
pression of business. 

George W. Dean. 



FREE TEADE— ITS EFFECTS ON THE FARMER. 

In my letter to the Hon. James Brooks in reply to a speech made by 
him in favor of free trade, I made the following offer, saying that 

" I am informed from Washington that Mr. Brooks is now ready ' to 
mount on a peddler's wagon and ride through the agricultural districts 
of the country exhibiting hoes, shovels, axes, bars, chains, rods, knives, 
forks, cottons and woollens, to demonstrate to the eyes of the people the 
enormous taxation imposed on them by the existing tariffs.' 

" Before he commences this journey among the farmers, I propose to 
share with him a large part of the expense, on condition that he will 
inform the farmers as he goes through the country that, according to 
Mr. Wells's report, there are one million of men now employed in the 
manufacture of those articles so indispensable to eA'ery farmer. 

" I want him to ascertain from the farmers how many millions of 
bushels of their grain and all other agricultural products are annually 
consumed by these hundreds of thousands of the workingmen of our 
country. I want him to be very particular, as he goes along, to show 
the farmers how perfectly insignificant the amount of grain is that has 
been sold abroad, when compared with the amount that is annually con- 
sumed by the men now employed in making the varioiis articles he enu- 
merates. It will be well, as he comes in contact with the farmers, to 
ascertain where they expect to find a market when those hundreds of 



70 

thousands that now consume their produce are forced to turn farmers 
and come in competition with them for a market. 

" I hope Mr. Brooks will quote from Mr. Wells's report, where he 
states ' that the American agriculturist does not command his own price 
in a foreign market, but the price commands him,' as he is compelled 
' to sell at the price offered in London, the central market of the world,' 
where farm labor is hired for one-half the price paid for it in this coun- 
try. 

" It will be a matter of the greatest interest for the farmers to know 
that Mr. Wells says ' there are now one million of skilled artisans in 
our country, making the largest and most valuable consuming class in 
this community.' 

" Mr. Brooks should tell the farmers that these are the men, with 
their families, employers and laborers, that consume a large part of all 
they have to sell, and are now paying them more than they could get in 
any other part of the world. 

" I hope Mr. Brooks will be sure, as he passes through the country, 
to tell the farmers that he and his friends are doing all they can to 
withdraw the legal-tender notes, and bring about a speedy return to 
specie payments, and that, notwithstanding, we are a debtor country to 
an amount nearly equal to our national debt. 

" He can assure the farmers that, as soon as our bank paper is pay- 
able in specie on demand, there will be some four or five dollars of 
paper afloat for every silver or gold dollar in the country. 

" He should assure the farmers that when all onr paper money is 
made payable in specie on demand, it will prove the most certain means 
that can be used to ' fertilize the rich man's field by the sweat of the 
poor man's brow.' 

" It will do this by ensuring the periodical return of those scenes of 
panic, pressure and general bankruptcy and ruin that have so often 
changed the values of all property and labor some twenty-five or fifty 
per cent, in a single year, whenever it was for the interest of foreign 
creditors or merchants at home to withdraw a few exti-a millions from 
our banks, as they did in '57, when a withdrawal of only seven millions 
produced the panic of that year, which sunk the values of all the pro- 
perty of our country to the amount of thousands of millions of dollars. 
These millions were taken from the farmers, mechanics and merchants 
who were in debt, and put in the possession of those who had the 
means to buy at the ruinous rates at which property of all kinds was 
compelled to be sold, thus making, as it ever must, the rich richer, and 
the poor poorer. 

" Mr. Brooks should sound an alarm as he goes through the country, 
and say to all that there can be no security for any man that is in debt 
until our general government shall perform its most important duty, 
which is not only to establish a just system of money, weights and 
measures, but a system of legal-tender paper money, in amount equal 
to the amount put in circulation at the end of the war by the necessi- 
ties of the government. 

" Such a legal-tender paper money would be a bond and mortgage on 
the whole property of the country and a bond of union among the states, 



71 

and would leave gold and silver to be an article of commerce in the 
hands of those who hold it. _ 

" Mr Brooks will perform a most valuable service to the country it 
he will tell the farmers that Dr. Franklin says that the American peo- 
ple under the old colonial government were so immoderately fond of the 
manufactures and superfluities of foreign countries ' that they could not 
be restrained from purchasing them,' ' because such laws, if made, would 
be immediately repealed as prejudicial to the trade and interest of Great 
Britain.' Dr. Franklin then adds that ' it seems hard, therefore, to 
draw all their real money from them, and then refuse them the privi- 
lege of using paper instead of it.' 

" Mr. Brooks will perform a most valuable service to the country by 
showing the farmers that the absenteeism that has ruined Ireland was 
nothing more the turning of a hundred small farms into one large graz- 
ing farm, that can be managed by a single individual, instead of making 
a home for the hundred individual farmers. 

« He should show the farmers that Ireland has been impoverished by 
the same policy that England tried to force on her American colonies, 
as will appear by the following facts of British legislation : ' 

" In 1710 a law was enacted in the House of Commons that declared 
the erecting of manufactories in the colonies tended to lessen their 
dependence on Great Britain. _ 

" In 1782 the exportation of hats from province to province, and the 
number of apprentices, was limited. 

" In 1750 the erection of any mill or engine for slitting or rolling 
iron was prohibited. 

11 In 1765 the exportation of artisans was prohibited under a heavy 

penalty. • , .„ 

" In 1781 utensils required for the manufacture of wool or silk were 

prohibited. . .. 

"In 1782 the prohibition was extended to artificers in printing cali- 
cos, muslins, or linens. , . . i 

" In 1785 the prohibition was extended to tools used in iron or steel 
manufacture, and to workmen employed. ?? 

" In 1799 it was so extended as to even embrace colliers. 

All classes should gather wisdom by reflecting on the history and the 
experience of the past. _ 

Free trade is beautiful in theory, and will be in practice where all 
things are equal and peaceful in the relations of nations, and rapid 
transit shall go far to annihilate space. 

Our government having allowed and used paper money until the 
day's labor has been made to cost at least one-third more than a similar 
day's labor would cost in other countries, to bring about an equality m 
trade will require a tariff based on the difference in the cost that will 
purchase a day's labor in our country as compared with that of foreign 
countries. . , 

If the farmers desire to secure for themselves a reliable market and 
the highest price for their product, they must use the means best calcu- 
lated to effect that object— they must encourage the manufacture ot the 
articles they consume and have them made as near their homes as pos- 



72 

sible. This should be done wherever good raw materials can be found 
that can be put into forms of usefulness with as small expense of labor 
in this country as in any part of the world. 

If I am not mistaken our country will rise out of its great embarrass- 
ment in a way that would astonish the world, if our government would 
perform what was and is its first and most important duty. 

The Constitution made it the duty of Congress to adopt measures 
that will "establish justice;" that is the only means by which the 
" common welfare can be promoted." 

To establish justic for a nation there must be created and maintained 
a just and uniform system of money, weights and measures. 

It is of the greatest importance that all the paper money allowed by 
the government should be made as unyielding in its power to pay debts 
as the yard-stick or the pound weight. 

Our government having been literally compelled to issue and use a 
legal-tender paper money in older to save the nation's life, has, by its 
use, caused the whole property of the country to be measured by its 
purchasing power. By this use of paper money the government has 
created a most solemn obligation on its part to do no act to increase or 
diminish the amount of pajjer money beyond the absolute necessities of 
the government. As an increase of the amount would inflate prices 
without increasing real values, in the same proportion a diminution of 
currency must cause all property to shrink in price, and thereby put it 
out of the power of the people to pay the national debt. 

One thing is certain that the national debts can never be paid by a 
governmental policy that shrinks the currency, destroys values, para- 
lyzes industry, enforces idleness, and brings wretchedness and ruin to 
the homes of millions of the American people. It is equally true that 
Americans can never buy anything cheap from foreign countries that 
must be bought at the expense of leaving our own good raw materials 
unused, and our own labor unemployed. It should be remembered that 
neither gold, silver, copper, nickel nor paper are money without the 
stamp of the government upon it. The Constitution has made it the 
duty of Congress to coin the money of our country and regulate the 
value thereof, and fix a standard of weights and measures, as the only 
possible means by which commerce can be regulated between foreign 
nations and among the several States. 

Peter Cooper. 



THE 

TJttMEASUKED IMPOETAN"OE 

OP AN • 

UNFLUCTUATING NATIONAL CURRENCY 

OVER WHICH THE GOVERNMENT HAS ENTIRE CONTROL. 



An Interview op a Reporter with Peter Cooper, as published in 
The New York Herald. 



Reporter. — Mr. Cooper, what do you think of the late letter of Mr. 
Reverdy Johnson on the subject of the currency ? 

Mr. Cooper. — I think that Mr. Johnson has there given some very 
wholesome truths, and for a man of his intelligence, he has made some 
remarkable mistakes. He says truly that " the question of currency is 
now the most important one before the country. It rises, or should rise, 
far above mere party contests." 

He adds, with great propriety, that " the subject of currency affects 
the permanent welfare of every citizen — the prosperity of the country, 
and the reputation of the Government." 

He then adds that "it must be obvious to every reflecting mind that 
a currency ought to be as far removed from fluctuations of value as 
possible. " 

I believe that Mr. Johnson is unquestionably right in saying that, 
" with a currency, subject at times to a depreciation and at times to 
appreciation, the consequences can but be injurious; and the extent of 
injury will be in proportion to the changes of value." 

Mr. Johnson then states, what I believe to be an entire mistake, that 
" the experience of the world has long since demonstrated that gold and 
silver alone constitute a safe ctirrency." 

As to what control the Government has over money, this will find 
its best answer in the language of the Constitution, where it says that 
" Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes," — " to bor- 
row money, to regulate commerce," — w to coin money and regulate the 
value thereof," a most important function, and " to make all laws which 
are necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing 
powers, and all other powers vested by the Constitution in the Govern- 
ment of the United States." These are necessary to " establish justice 
and promote the welfare of the nation." 

Rep. — But what are your views, Mr. Cooper, on this question of 
currency in relation to the Government at the present time? 

Mr. C. — I think the currency question has been managed by the 
Government very much in the interests of the moneyed classes, and 
very poorly in the interests of the people. Let us look at some of the 
facts. 

In the year 1860, a civil war broke out in this country which threat- 
ened the integrity and life of this nation. At this time, the expenses 



74 

of the Government increased very largely over its current expenses in 
time of peace. 

In fact, it became necessary for the Government to borrow money 
and place a large debt on the shoulders of posterity, in order to transmit 
unimpaired the priceless boon of free institutions, and a powerful and 
self-protecting Republic of States. Now, a nation is not like a private 
individual, who, if he wants money, must go and borrow it of some one 
else because he has no resource of his own from which money can come, 
but only some security which he may give that the money will be 
returned. A nation has, always, indefinite resources on which to draw, 
and yet can give no legal security for the payment of its obligations. 
Money itself is a creature of law, and the sovereign prerogative of the 
State. The Government can make anything a legal tender, and it is 
only a question of expediency what it shall make. But it can give no 
legal seciirity for payment of its debts, because a sovereign State cannot 
be sued, nor can you replevin on its property, except by war. To be 
sure, a nation may borrow as a private individual from another, or 
from a corporation ; but in doing so, it puts itself in a false position, 
and makes itself subject to the lender, as in any other debtor, to the 
extent of his debt — except that the creditor has no other resource for 
collection but to take entire control of that government, as respects 
its financial policy. Therefore,' the people and their interests may be 
shoved aside, for they become antagonistic to the class who are the 
creditors, who naturally desire to make their loans at the least cost and 
the highest interest. But if the people themselves in their solid inter- 
ests and unity, as represented by a Republican Government, were both 
the debtors and creditors of all the public debt, then there would be no 
antagonism between the debtors and creditors. 

Rep. — But do you mean to say, Mr. Cooper, that a Government has 
no need, and should never borrow from individuals and corporations ? 

Mr. C. — I think that a republic like ours, with its forty millions, with 
its enormous extent of unoccupied land, its wonderful resources, and its 
enterprising people — equally marvellous for their growth and the in- 
crease of their wealth within the century — has no need to borrow from 
anybody. Why should this people borrow, as a private debtor ? If, 
in their sovereign capacity through the Government and under consti- 
tutional and legal forms, they can lay under contribution the whole 
property, and the services of every manj in protecting the lives and 
property of all, they certainly can issue tokens of this undoubted fact, 
in the shape of legal tenders ; and these become, by this act of sover- 
eignty, the money of the country, the measure and the means of ex- 
changes. The people who give them, in their sovereign capacity, must 
take them in their private capacity, and again receive them in their 
sovereign capacity as the Government, for taxes. This makes their 
circulation and their use. But the significance of these paper " legal 
tenders" is that they are tokens of such service or material rendered 
to the Government ; and they are also promises to render an equal 
amount of money, service, or useful material in exchange, to the bolder, 
by the Government. 



75 

The paid functions of Government, or the equivalent taxes, form a 
just and adequate basis for the redemption of a paper currency, and 
furnish a better legal tender than gold or silver, for the domestic pur- 
poses of trade, if properly regulated by the GoverrmeLt; hence, I would 
demonetize gold and silver, except as mere tokens of value, and make 
Government paper, exclusively, the legal tender. 

This is a very important proposition, in the discussion of national 
finances, and demands a clear explanation. 

1st. If a private note of hand or a bank-note is "good" in propor- 
tion to the known credit and resources of the individual or the bank, so 
is that of the Government, and in a superior degree, as the Government 
has a larger credit and more resources than an individual or a bank. 

2d. An individual or a bank pays its debts by means of its credits, 
or the valid claims either may have on others ; so does the Government ; 
and the valid claims of Government are all represented in rightful 
taxes, imposed for its proper functions and employments. 

Government, on one side, is the giver of sound credit, represented by 
its paper ; the validity and redeeming basis of this paper is in the fact, 
that the community is indebted to the Government in the shape of 
taxes for so much service and material as may be necessary to carry on 
its proper function, and pay its officers for services rendered to the 
public ; this creates an obligation on the part of the public to receive 
Government paper for " value received." Thus the circulation is com- 
plete. As the creditors of an individual or of a bank receive its paper, 
and pass it to debtors, who in their turn pay their debts to the bank 
with its own paper, so the Government puts out its paper for service 
and labor, and redeems its notes by the taxes due. This is the sort of 
legal tender and currency we need, as undoubted representative for 
value received, as gold or silver. Regulated in volume by the amount 
of taxation which the people are willing to bear in order to support 
Government ; for not a dollar of it can be issued except for " value re- 
ceived," and under the watchful guard of the whole machinery of Gov- 
ernment. Where, then, is the danger of inflation, except in time of 
war, or by a temporary wresting of the Government from the hands of 
the people ? One of these contingencies is comparatively rare, and not 
without its compensations, in the objects attained by the war. Tho 
other is a very remote and improbable contingency, in a country like 
this — hardly worth taking into account, in this argument. 

On the other hand, bank-paper is sure to be inflated sooner or later, 
without compensation, but with general loss or disaster. For, if it is 
to be redeemed by specie, the paper cannot be kept within the limits of 
redemption and satisfy at the same time the demand for credit. If a 
part of it becomes irredeemable, the whole of it becomes irredeemable 
at a blow. 

But if the paper merely represents credit, it is the real capital and 
claims or assets of the bank that must support that credit ; and the his- 
tory of banking clearly shows that the inevitable tendency is, that bank 
circulation gets in advance of its real capital or assets; because the 
assets are sure to fall greatly in the market if they are brought quickly 
forward to pay its debts, as is the case in times of panic. The sudden 



76 

curtailment of its loans from time to time can alone keep up a system 
of banks, and this is sure to bring on ruin and panic in business. Not 
so with a Government currency, regulated solely by Government taxes 
and dues. It must be comparatively steady and unfluctuating as the 
taxes ; and hence, the general credits based on such a currency cannot 
fluctuate enough to produce great inflations, in times of peace, and the 
consequent reactions and panics in business. 

Rep. Why not? It seems to me that Government paper may be 
subject to great inflations, as well as bank paper, and the expanded 
credits that arise from such inflations must suffer contraction, sooner 
or later, by a natural law ; for the " pay day " must come at last, and 
few who are eager to borrow can meet the payment. Government 
paper may be inflated on a more gigantic scale than bank paper, as our 
last war proved. 

Mr. C. That was a war measure, and was justified for the same rea- 
son as the war. But the mischief did not arise from the expansion of 
the currency, which sent a vivifying influence throughout all our indus- 
tries, and produced the most prosperous times this country ever had ; 
but it was the contraction of the currency which brought the distress ; 
and this was neither necessary nor called for by any advantage accru- 
ing. 

The eagerness with which our currency was funded by foreign bond- 
holders was owing to the fact that our government gave such high rates 
of interest, as compared with other governments, and promised both 
principal and interest in gold when the paper that bought the bonds 
was at forty or sixty per cent, discount on the gold. Was that patri- 
otic or necessary ? To pay so much of the debt of the nation before it 
was due, as Mr. McCullough boasted was his object, and to turn so large 
a part of the currency which fed the industry of the people, into bonds 
that taxed that industry, was a very short-sighted policy for the Gov- 
ernment to pursue. 

Rep. But how is the Government always to keep its paper issues, in 
time of peace, on a par with the standard adopted as a unit of value — 
so much weight of silver or gold, in the coin dollar ? This standard 
gives meaning to the stamp on the paper, as equivalent to, or exchange- 
able for, so much value, as the number of dollars stamped on the paper, 
measured by the standard coin dollar. This is a necessary starting- 
point in measuriug values, as a certain length or a certain weight is to 
the yard-stick, or to the pound weight. 

Mr. C. That is very true. It is necessary to have some substantial 
and recognized standard of value to start with, in money, whether it be 
coin or currency. This standard, however, might be a pound of cotton 
of a certain fineness, or a pound of tobacco of a certain quality, as far 
as giving a standard value to the paper was concerned. It is also true 
that the paper must have some exchangable value as money, as mea- 
sured by a standard; and the Government cannot give it that exchange- 
able value, in any quantity, by merely stamping the paper as worth so 
much. What we want is a paper money, made equal in exchangeable 
value to gold or silver of a certain standard. 

Now the Government keeps its promise to pay in three ways. First, bj 



77 



„ a on ma v iip called for all taxes and 
accepting these paper promises, a th ey ^^^ ind i vi dual to 

invested, in twenty years. The eit y ^"^^indnal But the city, not 
represent a certain amount of interest and P™crpd J y, 

Zing the right to 1-J Xch y 'aSneforth a ^ fro m the pes! 

expenses on its own authority and credit? I answei . tfeca. 

wcS.ld be an act of too great a ocal SO T e ^ y -^ t °Ie general Gov- 

thanis now virtually ^ to ^i«^Sed^ 

of the bonds, as well as keeping it in ™pa£ ^ ^ S J \i/ MATERI 4 
settling down a circulating medium or currency i*to solid m 
and capital, organized into permanent use ^ con . 

This P makes a circulating ^^l^^LlnnJln of 

products of labor in process, and not yet comple for J^atr cornea 
vides merely the current wages or support, till the truit 01 

t0 ^ W ^S"u r opinion of the present banking 

^C.-Einancial institutions - very useful -d^m^lwaya 
be necessary to carry on the commerce ,^>J™ s m ^ which it j, 
country. They concentrate capital in financial centres, irom w 



78 

again distributed all over the country where it is most wanted. 1 regard 
a banking system, properly confined to the collecting and loaning out of 
the real capital, in aid of all useful enterprises, as a national blessing. 
But, incidentally, banks do a great deal of mischief by doing business, 
in part, on a bad system and on false assumptions. They often con- 
found the distinction between credit and capital, and do business on 
credit without capital. Credit must be distinguished from capital. 
Credit cannot be borrowed or lent ; it can only be given, or exercised 
by one mind toward another. Capital is borrowed and lent, for it can 
be passed from hand to hand. The one is very necessary to the other ; 
for capital supports credit, and credit sets capital to work in multiply- 
ing capital ; thus preventing the latter from waste and loss of it. 
Credit and capital, therefore, naturally imply each other, and are neces- 
sary to a mutual existence. It is death or disaster to both to sepai-ate 
them. Financial troubles may come from the want of capital, or credit, 
or both. 

Rep. — But how do you account for our present financial troubles ? 

Mr. C. — Our present financial troubles doubtless began in the 
want of sufficient capital, at command, to carry on certain great and 
small enterprises to successful issues, in which the parties asked more 
credit than there was capital to back it. But when these parties failed, 
it gave a shock to credit ; this paralyzed the active use of capital, and 
withdrew it still more from the support of credit, until a " panic " 
came. For people did not know where or when this trouble would 
stop. Like a crowd in a public building, the rush for escape, when 
there is an alarm given, bears no proportion to the danger ; but it soon 
substitutes a far worse source of destruction and suffering in the 
"panic." And, as in this case, the trouble is soon relieved by opening 
wide the doors of egress, so, in financial panics and troubles, the true 
remedy is expansion of credits and capital, and not contraction. 

Rep. — But what have the banks to do with all this? 

Mr. C. — I have not, as yet, mentioned the chief source of our 
financial troubles and panics ; it is the false system which our financial 
institutions mix up with what is true in them. They rest much busi- 
ness on a " false bottom," which may drop out at any time. They 
lend their credit without sufficient capital to back it, and call it " lend- 
ing capital." The old system of banks which some are now anxious to 
renew, lent out three and five dollars in paper to one of gold kept for 
redemption. Their capital was to the credit they assumed as one to three, 
five, or more ; consequently, when the capital promised by the paper was 
called for, as sooner or later it must be, so much of the credit came to 
naught, involving loss to the bsfliks, not of their capital, but of their 
sham credits. But these " sham credits " meanwhile had transferred a 
great deal of real property from the hands to which the property belonged 
to those who held the temporary credit. This injustice and wrong cornea 
to the surface, at short intervals, in the shape of " panics " and financial 
distress. The present system of banks, although not doing business on a 
Bpecie basis, yet introduces a " false bottom " to business in another way ; 
they do a large amount of business on their depositors' capital. If the 
u deposits " are called for faster than the bank can return them, the 



79 



bank fails in its credit, but loses comparatively little, ^lojof real 
capital falls cbiefly on tbe trusting "depositors. This system goes 
wV,lv transferrin- property and facilitating trade, till tbe capital 
Bm £5 bv tZ^edl ^needed in substantial form. Tbe promise can 
rW y b?£u^ the payment is required; then *e false props are • 
all token away, and financial ruin is tbe -result ; credit given to brains 
mu cle indust y, and enterprise is one thing, and credit given to actual 
Zducts^nd estates is another ; but still, credit based on either is a real 
L^ because brain-work and enterprise are just as real as the material 
wJoSTwbioh they give existence. But -edit based on niexe 
^assumption or supposition of capital, is not properly based. It is a 
Dog\is credit, that looks like the real thing, but sooner or later fails 

^Iflhe Government does not require the banks to redeem their note, 
either £ gold or in bonds, or if it allows them to com their deposits into 
loans ttlves them the privilege of giving others the use simply of the 
banks' crfdit, far beyond their capital. The banks have done too much 

^^^^hen^ould be your remedy for this false system of 

ba Mi n C ? -The true remedy for all these financial shams and pretences 
that transfer the property of the real owners to those who are mere 
financSratents, is to permit the banks to do business on y on rea 
mTey or legal tender, interconvertible with bonds. This mU convert 
all money into a safety fund, and make it unnecessary for banks to loan 
^deposits, which they can always fund in government securities, and 
have them again "on call." But this system will expand the real 
credits which°the banks can give, based all on real capital, and make 
sucn credits equal to the wants of a new and expanding country like 
ours, with institutions that stimulate the industries he enterprises 
and the powers of this people, beyond anything that history can yet 

" 3:tLke altogether, or put a false construction on trans- 
actions (Lied credit, which are not so, strictly, For instance if you 
go to a bank or a broker, and give your bonds, stocks, or securities m 
mort^es or any other shape, and borrow a certain amount on the 
Tmefthat is not Lictly giving and receiving credit ; it is s^niply a sa e 
of r,ronertv with AN IF. For if you fail to pay on a certain day, there 
^ST^sfe^ce of property/but no credit lost. In fact the man 
Wows the use of credit in the shape of money, but makes it good on 
bis own property. Therefore, the borrower himself gives the only 
foundltion there Is to that credit. But if the man is about to improve 
aS^id a factory, and borrows money to buy «^£«^ 
labor, which money can only be returned if he suc^ ^ emer 
prise and produces a piece of property on the str ength of Hhat credit, 
which mav return all that has been invested in it, that is real credit 
That money represents the credit or faith given to an enterprise and a 
work Tn process, which may result in some valuable property; but if 
raoe not the credit is lost, and both borrower and creditor are sufTer- 
er8 by ^e failure. There is certainly a difference between borrowing 



80 

nuuej dl the security of a tangible property, equivalent to the sum 
borrowed, and borrowing money on the faith of the powers, intelligence, 
and capacity for work which will create a piece of property if given the 
credit, and opportunity which the money furnishes. This last is the 
only credit that the poor need, or can ask. But it is essential in the 
world, and there ought to be no limit to such credit, except what is 
sufficient to set every man and woman to some useful work. 

This makes credit in finance, like faith in religion, " the evidence of 
things unseen and the substance of things hoped for." This process is 
going on every day, for there can be no growth or development in society 
without it. But now governments, general an local, mix up their own 
credit, or seek altogether to sustain the public, on private credit. The 
sovereign authority of making this circulating medium of money, which 
ought to be backed by the highest, the most permanent and reliable 
ability to pay, is thought safer by many when the weight of responsi- 
bility is put upon private shoulders or those of corporations, than when 
it is resting upon the broad and secure basis of a nation organized tinder 
republican institutions, " by the people and for the people," and pledg 
ing its wealth and honor as a nation for the redemption of all debts 
incurred for the public weal. 

This enslaves a people, through the very machinery of free institutions 
and republican forms, to the will, the caprice, or the greed of particular 
classes of individuals that control money. The Government should 
never be a boiTOwer, except of such labor and material as is necessary 
to public service. This it must acknowledge by tokens of its own crea- 
tion and stamp, and pay at muturity, by means of taxes on property 
which this very credit has brought into existence, and, as it were, solidi- 
fied into a permanent source of income, such as a great public work, or 
any form of fixed capital, or, still more a nation's life and prosperity. 
What I said New York was doing, and might do with regard to her 
public works, could be done by the Government on a far grander scale. 

Rep. But, Mr. Cooper, I do not understand what you call " real 
money P Is not gold and silver the only real money, and all other 
forms merely representative of value ? 

Mr. C. No, sir ; gold and silver is not the only real money. The 
precious metals are constituted money by the same authority, and for 
the same purpose, that paper may be employed as money. Money is 
purely a creature of law. All metals must be coined by authority be- 
fore they can pass as money ; and the proof of this is in the fact that 
the precious metal stamped and made into money by one Government 
will not pass as such under the jurisdiction of another. Foreign coin 
is never a " legal tender.'''' This being the case, we must look to some- 
thing else as the essential characteristic of money than the exchangeable 
value of the substance of which it is made, which makes it a commodity 
in any market. The value of money depends upon two conditions only, 
both of which are governed by law, and only one of which depends upon 
demand and supply, as do the values of pure commodities. The first 
condition of giving value to money is to make it a legal tender for all 
private debts, and also the taxes and dues of Government. This gives 
it a purely legal value, and makes it like a mortgage on property, and 



81 

also like a note of hand, issued by the Government, tud secu) ed as well 
as redeemed by its taxing power and authority over the whoh property 
of the country. The second condition of value ia money is that it 
should be rentable, like any other capital, or bear some inteiest, to the 
lender. This can also be fixed by law, as in laws of usurv. But the 
Government can go further than this in giving a l^gal value to its own 
legal tender in the shape of paper money ; it can make this legal tender 
fundable at a fixed rate of interest, payable either in coin or in its equiva- 
lent paper. The bonds of the Government thus give a secondary or 
vendible value to the paper money, which makes it like any other com- 
modity, rentable, and of a market value. This being a fact, it shows 
that in all the proper qualities of real money paper money can be made 
such by the Government that issues it, as gol 1 or silver coin — it will 
pay all your debts and taxes, and also has a ma) Icet value, because it is 
rentable or loanable. 

Rep. But not abroad ; you cannot send this money abroad. 

Mr. C. No, you cannot send any money abr jad except as commodity, 
vendible, which takes from it the character of money. But this is an 
advantage in the use of paper money, which, being an indispensable 
measure of values at home, and a necessary means of exchange, should 
never be taken from the trade and domestic uses of one country to be 
exported as commodity to another. 

Rep. How, then, shall we keep up its value on a par with that of 
other countries, so that we shall not be buying abroad with one stand- 
ard of value and selling at home with another *? 

Mr. C. That is no great hardship, compared to being left without 
sufficient money, to do business and pay the wages of labor. But the 
true remedy for this is to encourage industry in every way at home, so 
as to have a surplus of production in things that can find a market 
abroad, and thus keep even the "balance of trade" which keeps the 
money of different countries at a par val ie. For this purpose nothing 
is more conducive than a good, sound •urrency at home, in sufficient 
quantities, at all times, to keep up all thf exchanges and the payment of 
wages needed for our own domestic industries, and to protect our own 
people from too great a competition wi< h the cheap labor of Europe by 
a proper revenue tariff. This is the commercial and financial sheet- 
anchor of any people. A tariff taxes the surplus of other countries 
which finds its way to our own markets for the support of the Govern- 
ment that protects, and in a manner furnishes that market. It taxes 
chiefly the capital of the foreign manufacturer and the domestic im- 
porter of this surplus production, because tbey must find a mai'ket 
somewhere, and therefore sell at whatever rates they can get in compe- 
tition with the industry at home, helped by the tariff; and it taxes the 
consumer, who will buy luxuries, that lea ve our own good raw material 
unused and our own domestic labor unemployed — for I assume that 
nothing but what interferes with these shall be subject to tariff. 

Rep. But gold and silver have an intrinsic and inalienable market 
value all over the woi'ld ; whereas your Government paper money — 
currency or bonds — has purely a legal ^alue, and may be real to-daj r buf 
nothing to morrow, depending eD fcirely apon the stability of Government 



82 

Me. C. So has all paper representing true value and made the medium 
of exchange — a " note of hand," a mortgage, or a bank-note — they all 
derive their virtual value from the law that constitutes them repre 
sentatives of value. Yet modern commerce and trade cannot dispense 
with these and reduce all their transactions to barter, or to paying bal • 
lances with gold and silver. They assume the stability of governments, 
without which neither property nor life are secure. What security would 
gold give if there were no Government to protect it ? All these paper 
obligations, used as medium of exchange, and having a market value, 
are based upon the faith, the property, and stability of individ i lals or 
corporations, with the further sanction of law. "We desire, as a medium 
of exchange, a legal tender that shall represent the whole taxable prop- 
erty of the country and the stability and faith of the Government. It 
seems to me that if a corporation can issue valuable paper, much more 
can a Government, backed by the resources of a whole people, do the 
same. 

Rep. But how has the Government failed in its duty to the people ? 

Mr. C. The Government, during the progress of this war of the rebel- 
lion, felt obliged to employ more service and material in the struggle for 
existence with a powerful foe than it could pay from any immediate re- 
sources. It felt obliged to borrow this material and service on credit. 
It issued its bonds ; but the Government went begging, as New York 
does, to private individuals and to corporations to furnish another credit, 
called money, for the purpose of paying current expenses The limited 
amount of this latter credit which was at the service of the Government 
made the bonds sell at great discount on their face. 

Gold was sought for, when there was not enough qf this product of 
labor within reach to represent a tithe of the credit sought by the Gov- 
ernment. Now, if the Government could issue one form of credit, why 
go begging for another ? 

This occurred at last to some of those ,in authority and paper money 
tokens were issued. Under a patriotic impulse and faith in this nation 
and its resources, some of these were made receivable for all dues of 
the Government, and others made convertible into 5-20 bonds at par — 
at the will of the holder. This made and kept the currency nearly 
at par with gold, even in the dark days of civil war. This will always 
keep the national currency equal in value to gold, provided it is the 
only paper in circulation, and the exclusive legal tender, and fully re- 
deemed by taxes, duties and Government bonds, at the option of the 
holder. . The Government thus has a three-fold method of redeeming 
its paper, whereas the banks have but one method, and that is by 
specie. This method must fail them, at times, because the specie will 
go out of the country, when the balances of trade are against us, in 
quantities sufficient to interfere with redemption. " Bank paper," 
as Calhoun says, "is cheap to those who make it, but dear, 
very dear to those who use it." Banks can never redeem their 
paper in specie, except in times of expanding credits, when very 
little specie is wanted. During such times the banks secure them- 
selves on real property, but the public is secured on the bank 
papor only in its promise to pay coin. Bu * -his national currency was 



83 



X* ST- S%ote e uf, ^tfg*? mtc circm 
Wta, gave ^ Private •^J^^jL^EftgSS their 

They represented that gold would be drained from the country, and our 
nurchasine power abroad reduced to nothing. ,' •■ The 

1 "Hoi should wo get our silks, our wines and our cigars? The 
imported, broken, and money changers of all kinds as weU a^ the 

thP rurrencv of the United States receivable for all dues to the uovem 

2^sr - - ^ g r^ if ' thet: j^EstiK 

K SS 5 th T em a'Thci'r °option into Lerest-bearing bonds 
was tie most cruel act of injustice that was ever **£*£*» 
American people. From thence have come most of the hnancial 
tSranT&te™ of which - much com^a t i ^ ^ * 
T,rP«PTit time Our bonds were rushed abroad, to be excnan^eu iui 
[n^udes and mr "old at sixty cents on the dollar, instead oi bemg 

nUllion^f^ld^brotdCpay interest to foreign bondholders, in- 

X°o"y or r^dtXSwAm inspired into the Government ; 
.li^necessities of the war being over ^"^^ 
made and currency was withdrawn, and all credits began to contract, as 
a " °and inevitable consequence. This brought -«-£„*- 
irrational conditions in human affairs which we call a panic, tnat 
brought down, credit at once to the zero pomt, and shrunk the value of 

al REP-But Mr. Cooper, do you not think that personal extravagance 
rash speculations, and ove'r-production generally, have much to do with 
the present financial embarrassments ? , 

Ma C —In a restricted sense all these causes lie at the bass ot mucc 
BnancM embarrassment: But ,11 of them put together will not accenn. 



84 

for the fact that there are over two mi.lions of workmen, operatives, 
and employees, out of work at this time in this country, or on short 
allowance of work, who three years ago had ample employment. Specu- 
lations ruin a few in financial centres and cause merely a change of 
ownership in property, and the loss of credit to those engaged in such 
speculations. Personal extravagance is chiefly confined to a few rich 
men, for most people care not or are unable to indulge beyond their 
means. 

Over-production and undue importations seem to be the most plausible 
of the reasons oft'ered for the present financial embarrassments ; because, 
when goods accumulate in merchants' hands, and products multiply in 
the factories, the mines, and farms, without a corresponding demand and 
consumption, the most obvious cause or exjilanation is, that there have 
been too much production and importation. But have these been too 
much for the demand and consumption previously existing, or subse- 
quently ? The true law of supply, and the stimulus, and the reason for 
production, is demand ; this comes first, and the former comes last in 
the order of nature. There might be a production that overtakes and 
passes an existing consumption in particular cases ; but it is well also 
to examine, in a general way, whether any cause has paralyzed consump- 
tion. Now, it has been seen that the systematic and constant contrac- 
tion of Government credits naturally induced the contraction of all other 
credits ; this finally brought on a panic that acted like a paralysis on all 
credit ; this led inevitably to the stoppage of so much active industry 
and work as to take away the purchasing power of a great many, and 
to stop a large jiart of the previously existing consumption and demand. 
Hence, the over-production (so-called) has been merely an accumulation 
of products, due to under-consumption. The proof of this lies in the 
fact, as I have said, of so many industrious people being thrown out of 
work, and in the statistics of the country, with regard to its exporta- 
tions and importations the last few years. In this connection the opinion 
of President Grant, as expressed in his annual message of 1873, is im- 
portant. 

Pep. — But how would you have prevented this sad condition of things 
from coming on ? It appears to me it arose naturally out of the irre- 
deemable nature of the currency. Gold and silver have always been 
regarded as the currency and money of the world. A man that is in 
debt naturally desires to get out of it as soon as he can. Why, then, 
should not a nation exercise economy or " contraction " for the same 
end ? 

Mr. C. — Because " contraction " in finance is not the same thing as 
economy in private life. u Conti'action " in the finances of a country 
means the stoppage of a certain amount of the industry and exchanges 
going on in the nation, by reason of the contraction of the credit by 
which these are sustained. It means factories stopped, and men thrown 
out of work, and distress of families for want of the means to buy bread. 
Now, this is all wrong, and it arises out of a false financial system, 
not adapted to the wants of a people whose wants and powers are all 
the time expanding, by reason of a natural increase in the population, 
and by our possession of a new country of unlimited natural resources, 



85 

which yet need to be developed by the expansion and n>t the contrac- 
tion of the credit which capital gives to labor. _ 

But, I grant you, there is a contraction on the side of debt in the 
finances of a country which is always desirable. It is in that solidify- 
ing process which I have already described, that turns currency into 
fixed capital, as the blood is deposited into bones, flesh, and organism. 
The bond, and the currency based on it, must be paid and destroyed as 
evidence of that debt, as soon as value received for them can be turned 
into some permanent source of industry and capital, like the stone 
wharves and piers of the City of New York. But new credits must 
ever spring up, which are the incipient condition of new improvements, 
public and°private, and all fixed forms of capital. There must always 
be expansion enough in the currency to set all the capacity for useful 
labor in the countrv to work. This is the only limit to the expansion 
of credits. Gold and silver ceased long ago in the history of the world 
to serve as an adequate representative of all those exchanges which are 
going on in the civilized world, and which it is the proper function of 
money to represent. Coin has long called to its assistance " paper of 
credit," both private and public, not merely to represent coin as money, 
but to represent other real property, and especially the current 

DAILY LABOR OF THE WORLD'S INDUSTRIAL CLASSES, whose aggregate 

wages any day could not be paid by all the coin in the world. 
France uses gold, silver, and paper, all as legal tenders, and keeps them 
all busy to satisfy her industrial and financial wants. But France could 
not get along a single day with the coin alone which is within its bor- 
ders* or with paper that merely represented coin as currency. This 
being the fact, as every one ought to know who talks on this subject, it 
is a most preposterous claim that coin alone can serve as legal tender, 
or paper always convertible into coin. You may adopt the legal fiction 
that all legal tenders should be convertible into coin at the will of the 
holder, but you cannot carry out this in fact ; and the failure to^carry 
it out at any given time, for any cause, may produce a " panic, with 
all its disasters. 

R EP ._But what would you have the Government do in reference to 

its present policy ? . 

Mr. C— The course is plain. Let the Government issue, not only 
all the legal tenders, but all that passes in the shape of money— all 
should have the "image and superscription" of the Government, 
whether it be coin or paper. Let the Government start from a fact, 
that there has been, and is now, through its instrumentality and neces- 
sities, so many millions of legal tenders and bank paper or currency set 
afloat, which, with the Government bonds now out, represent so much 
credit resting on the honor and ability of the Government to pay, but 
furnishing also the basis for a great amount of credit in the financial 
system of the country. On this the country has been depending, and 
with this it has been at work, in all its industries and trade, since the 
credit paper came into existence. 

The Government has no right to take away these tools, that have set 
so much work on foot, from the people. It is not justice. Suppose a 
man has engaged another in the enterprise of building a house or factory, 



86 

by promising to furnish all the tools, and by giving a certain valuation 
or rent for it when it is finished. Then at a certain stage of the pro- 
cess of erection, the proprietor takes away a part of ti^e tools necessary 
to finish the work, and, moreover, diminishes the valuation of both 
work and material. Would not that be considered a great act of in- 
justice, especially if the builder had no remedy in law against the pro- 
prietor ? Now, this is precisely what the Government has done to the 
industrial part of the nation, with the additional injustice of compulsion 
in its dealings with the people who are not the moneyed and the govern- 
ing class. The Government, during a time of great exigency, issued 
millions of credit paper, on the strength of which the people willingly 
furnished labor and material to carry on a war of self-preservation 
against rebellion and disruption. But not only that, the people began 
to build up the country on the strength of this same credit paper ; they 
set on foot new enterprises, built railroads, factories, and opened new 
mines and farms on the same credit, and by the facilities for paying 
labor and material which this Government currency afforded. After 
the war was over the Government began to contract this currency, and 
to tax the people, in order to buy its bonds before they were yet due ; 
which policy contracted credit so much the more ; and it has continued 
to pursue systematically a policy of contraction, for the purpose, as 
alleged, to resume specie payments on this currency. The people do 
not want specie ; they want the credits already given them not t,0 be 
withdrawn ; they want their labor and material freely given to save 
the country, or to build it up, to be valued by the same standard as 
that by which it was measured when they began to work. Thq 
moneyed class obviously want scarce money and high rates of interest. 
This gives them more power and -less expense. But the advantage of 
the whole people, including this very moneyed class, if their interests 
were rightly understood, is to have credit easy to the industrious, the 
honest, and the enterprising, and the interest of money more nearly 
equitable. 

Rep. — What, then, Mr. Cooper, would be your specific remedy for the 
financial troubles which involve the country at present ? What would 
be the policy you would recommend for the action of Congress ? 

Mr. C. — At present Congress has devised no better plan for the 
financial policy of the country than this. Congress has passed a law 
that specie payments for all currency shall be resumed in 1879, and to 
provide for this it has authorized the Treasurer of the United States to 
withdraw currency until the present volume shall shrink from four 
hundred to three hundred millions ; and he is further authorized to 
sell bonds at 4 or 4^- per cent, interest, to the amount necessary to get 
the specie wherewith to resume payments. As the 5 per cent, bonds, 
outstanding, are only at par now, I think the prospect is very poor for 
selling the 4 or 4|- per cent, without ruinous discounts and large addi- 
tion to the debt of the nation. If the banks also are made to do busi- 
ness and issue their notes only on a specie basis, instead of bonds as 
now, it will shrink their currency so as to bring another panic. 

But if the banks are allowed to give credits secured by Government 
bonds, why should not the Government itself do the same ? If it will 



87 

hurt the banks, atfd cripple and curtail so much their resources for giv 
inc credit, why is not such a policy objectionable as to the credits given 
by°the Government ? But here is precisely the point of departure of the 
moneyed class from the people at large. They wish to monopolize not 
only private but all public credits. All credits under the sanction and 
provision of law and the Government ought to be public credits, for which 
the Government alone should be held responsible. Such is any paper 
currency now, even if it is not legal tender. Nothing but a legal sanc- 
tion can pass a bank-note into the circulation of the country. The 
credit of the bank is indorsed by the Government, in order to be regarded 
as good. The Government, under the present system, often borrows its 
own indorsement ! But the first point of departure I would have from 
this whole system of finance is, that everything, gold, silver, or paper, 
that passes into the circulation of the country as money should have the 
Government's " image and superscription " upon it, and should be issued 
and controlled entirely by the Government, so that there shall be no 
legalized money, directly or indirectly, belonging to private corporations. 
This is a part of that " special and class legislation " that I have always 
contended against as the bane of republican institutions. 

Now I would have Congress repeal this last act of contraction of the 
people's credits in the shape of currency, while it is an expansion of 
credits to the moneyed class, in the shape of bonds. 

I would have Congress pass an act that should make all currency that 
of the Government alone ; and, of course, I should abolish the present 
bank currency, giving these institutions the option of doing business only 
on legal tenders ; these they may secure at any time, by simply giving 
up to the Government an equivalent amount of Government bonds, whose 
interest thereafter stops until bought up again by legal_ tenders. This 
will extinguish the interest-bearing debt of the country in part, by one 
not bearing interest. 

Secondly, to start all fairly and justly, I would have Congress pass an 
act restoring the currency in volume to the condition in which it was 
at the close of the war, or soon after ; when, peace being declared, the 
whole nation sprang to the arts of peace with the energy of war ; when 
they took these very credits, which the necessities of Government had 
furnished, as the price of the nation's life, and began to build up the 
country still more securely in the wealth and products of "myriad- 
handed industry ; " when their hopes and their faith were stimulated to 
new life by this mighty credit poured into the circulation of the country, 
and all the property of the country and its products were measured and 
exchanged by the new standard ; when none were found idle exeept the 
shiftless and those who sought idleness ; when no factory stopped its 
production for want of consumers, for all were consumers, because all 
were producers. I would have all that currency restored to the country, 
and not withdrawn or contracted by taxing the property of the country 
to pay it ; but allowed to remain, till it had produced its equivalent 
by the industry and products which it brought into existence. 

I would have this whole volume of currency made as permanent and 
invariable a measure of property and exchange as possible, by neither 
increasing nor diminishing its volume by any arbitrary law ; but rather 



use the agency of Government to keep at its present stated volume, by 
issuing it again with one hand for labor, service, and bonds, while it 
received it with the other as currency. I would have this specific 
volume of the currency from which we shall now start, he aceforth and 
forever, never diminished at all, and only increased as per capita, very 
gradually and imperceptibly, as statistics shall show, and a rule of in- 
crease founded thereon, as the exchanges and the population of the 
country increase. And this would be virtually equivalent to making 
the currency a permanent and unfluctuating standard of values ; for it 
would keep it in the same ratio or relative measure to all the property 
of the country and the increase of its po2)ulation. I would thus make 
the stated volume of currency which has been forced upon the country 
at one time, but which now threatens the most unhappy consequences 
if it be withdrawn — I would make this one volume an unvarying 
measure "for all time, by giving it an expansion by rule and statistical 
measure of slow application, and such as would never derange prices or 
permit fluctuations. I would not increase the bonded debt of the coun- 
try either, except by rule and statistical measure ; but I would change its 
form from the present high rate of interest, and from so large a portion 
payable in gold to foreigners, into a debt of equitable rate of interest, 
and payable to our own citizens. 

Rep. — But how can this be done without repudiation and dishonor to 
the country ? 

Mr. C. — No vested rights can stand in the face of the public welfare ; 
common and statute law recognizes this principle. Hence, all vested 
rights can be repealed by the law-making power that conferred them. 
Under this principle, private property can be taken for public use, and 
all corporate rights can be abolished that stand in the way of the public 
welfare — but never without proper compensation to the parties that may 
be losers ; and of this, the public administration must appoint the means 
and provide the regulations. But I propose to change the character of 
the bonded debt by a voluntary process. 

First. Whoever needs currency must give up the Government bonds 
for it. The compulsion here is in making every one do business and 
pay debts in legal tenders ; and the principle for their use exclusively 
is that the public welfare admits of no other money. 

Secondly. Whoever desires to fund the currency shall receive bonds 
at a lower rate of interest than that which legitimate business now gives, 
but which is higher than the average yearly increase of the whole prop- 
erty of the country. This I would fix upon as the interest of the bonds ; 
it is now about three per cent. 

There is an element of compulsion here ; but as the whole country 
pays the interest on the public debt, it seems but just that only that 
amount of interest should be paid, which the increase in the public 
wealth justifies, and no more. 

Rep. — But how will you prevent the too rapid funding of the currency, 
and keep it at a steady volume, as you propose ? 

Mr. C. — This " too rapid funding " is, I think, a groundless fear, con- 
sidering the low rate of interest given. Because, in a country like this, 
bo active, so enterprising, and so full of new resources, the opportuni- 



89 



£fcd idleU, e B r ^te trSJwt'onfs ^S 
^tr'and"" a' he tme fu^d Tt-erti of Europe would seek 

countries could afford. which is now very 

K EP _But what about the gold all this time, wmcn u / 

mud! mixed up with this question of finance, because it is so urn 

versally the legal tender of civilized nations 

\iv P Tt miaht be a part of our legal tender sun. j. 

niodity at the m ike ipri£ convenie nce and the state of the 

commodity for gold, as suits tneir without tyranny and in- 

* *? S^SffuS'^^tSSS-b £* bonds, which the 

money, and makes tins f une " c J . , w hich it canno t control ; 

sssas rt;,r:r s :i; h 1 o'°the F — -ot. *» 



90 

precisely that volume of credits in currency and in bonds, that was set 
afloat by the irresistible necessities of the war for the Union ; that this 
"volume should be sustained substantially as it was soon after the close 
of the war, when it rose to its maximum ; and be made the measure of , 
all values, and the means of exchanges for all coming time — subject 
only to the slow increase of volume which statistics shali justify as the 
increase of population, and its ratio, per capita, to the currency. 

Mr. C. — That is precisely what I propose ; and my efforts to bring 
this subject before the public are heartily seconded by many able gen- 
tlemen. 

Rep. — But it appears to me, Mr. Cooper, you place great power in 
the hands of the Government by such a policy. Tt may lead to enor- 
mous speculations and peculations on the part of individuals and offi- 
cials. Politics will become a trade more than ever, because of their 
close connection with finance, commerce, and moneyed institutions. 
Some administration may ride again and again into power, and over- 
throw finally all the free institutions of the country with a great flood 
of currency, which it can manufacture in unlimited quantities by a 
slight change in the laws that Congress may be induced to enact at any 
time. 

Mr. C. — It would require almost a treatise on republican government 
to answer all your objections, and then you could not be answered if 
you had no faith in free principles and democratic forms, and in the 
paternal functions of a government instituted " by the people and for 
the people." The slave-holders of our country had to learn this lesson 
at last, and I do not know any vested rights in property so enormous, 
or so intelligent and well organized resistance as slavery brought to 
bear upon the free institutions of this country. And yet the slave- 
holding portion of this country will find itself the greatest gainer by its 
losses. They lost in the conflict, chiefly through the might of truth and 
justice, which will be their great gain. We shall have many conflicts, 
doubtless, between the people on one side, and moneyed, social, or 
religious classes organized with certain claims, and even vested rights ; 
but never again so great a conflict as the slave holders brought about. 
I think the Union and the Republic may be regarded as safe for a long 
time to come. The people can and will control this Government in 
their own interests in the future, as well as in the past, pi-ecisely in 
proportion as they can be made conscious of their power and their 
rights. The forms of the Constitution and laws are all favorable to 
them now, but their understanding is darkened by bad counsels. The 
Government is already, and ought to be in a still larger measure, 
paternal. It should aim constantly to " establish justice," and organize 
love and right into law. If we can teach the people justice and truth, 
they will see to it that the " Republic suffers no detriment." There is 
nothing that I can perceive in the policy I advise that will place any 
uncontrollable power in the hands of any Administration or Congress. 
If the law will not protect the people's rights, let provisions of the 
Constitution be resorted to. Let us have a " civil service " that will 
makp, office under Government more of a " professional " and regular 
occupation than of trade and bargain for place and patronage. Let the 



91 

United States embody in their Constitution, as has the Stsfcti of New 
York, that there shall be "no special, partial, or class legislation,''' and 
make its laws on the currency conform to this provision of the Con- 
stitution. 

The question of the currency is of boundless importance to the Amer- 
ican people. The stability of our Government will depend on a wise 
settlement of this momentous interest. 

The American people will 'never allow this subject to rest until it is 
safely moored to that sure foundation of the eternal principles of truth 
and justice on which our fathers placed the Constitution of these 
United States. 

Our fathers meant that the Government should be of the people and 
for the people. They intended to embody the " wisdom of simplicity " 
into law, and make it a shield of protection for the unsuspecting masses 
of the people against those that are resorting to all forms of art to 
obtain property without labor. The framers of the Constitution would 
never have recommended one kind of money for the issues of the Gov- 
ernment, and another for the people. 

Under the circumstances in which our Government was placed at 
the close of the late war, they would have taken the advice of their 
most venerated member, Benjamin Franklin, who said that " paper 
money, well-founded, has great advantages over gold and silver, being 
light, and convenient for handling in large sums, and not likely to be 
reduced by demand for exj^ortation." 

" On the whole," he says, " no method has hitherto been found to 
establish a medium of trade, equal in all its advantages to bills of credit 
made a general legal tender." 

If I have done, or can do anything to restore the tools of trade to 
the American people, to enable them to work out the salvation of our 
country from the present paralyzed condition of trade and commerce, I 
shall regard it as a treasure that " moth and rust cannot corrupt," — 
one that will brighten while life and thought and immortality endures. 



AN OPEN LETTER 

TO PRESIDENT R. B. HAYES. 

By Peter Coopee. 

New York, August 6, 1877. 
Although I have but lately addressed you an open letter on the sad 
state of the industrial and financial conditions of our common country, 
and the causes that have brought it about yet the events that have 
since transpired, while they have given additional emphasis to that 
appeal, justify me in once more addressing you on the same object- 
Surely the peaceful expostulations and complaints of so many thou- 
sands of your fellow-citizens, going up from every part of this distressed 
country, not to speak of the violence and lawlessness which this distress 
has occasioned, not only appeal to your humanity and patriotism but 
call for the most earnest and instant action on the part of the Govern- 
ment of which you are the chief Executive. 

From your past patriotic life and action, and from your present wise 
and conciliating conduct in the political affairs of this country w.e have 
every reason to hope a new and straight path of relief will be found for 
the manifest evils under which this country is laboring. 

It is with this hope, and, at my advanced age, with no other motive 
than the welfare of our beloved country, that I unite with thousands 
of my fellow-citizens in calling your attention, and that of your political 
advisers, not only to the facts, which are obvious enough, but to the 
causes and the remedies that ought to be considered m devising the best 
m^ans of curing the present evils. The facts themselves are appalling 

^Se^htlw^hundred thousand men, within the last few weeks, 
have ioined in « strikes" on the various railroad lines, the workshops, 
and the mines of the country, on account of further reduction in heir 
wages already reduced to the living point. That some of the-e strikes 
have been attended with lawless and unjustifiable violence only shows 
the intensity of the evils complained of, and the despair of the sufferers 
For four years past, since the « panic of 1873," millions of men and 
women, in this hitherto rich and prosperous country, have been thrown 
Tut of employment, or living on precarious and inadequate wages, have 
felt embTttered with a lot in which neither economy nor industry, nor 
a cheerful willingness to work hard, can bring any alleviation. 

Is it to be wondered at that enforced idleness has made tramps of so 
7 



98 

many of our laboring population, or induced them to join the criminal 
and dangerous classes? 

During this same period, immigration into this country of the hardy 
and industrious of all nations, who have hitherto built up our country, 
has, in a great measure, stopped, while thousands of artisans and 
mechanics whom a prosperous country cannot spare, are emigrating to 
other countries. Our manufactories are, many of them, closed, or 
running at a loss, or giving starvation prices to their operatives. Our 
merchants are demanding the reduction of their rents, discharging many 
of their employes, and such as are in debt are fast going into bank- 
ruptcy. The mining and railroad interests of the country, on which 
the income and the employment of so many thousands depend, are fast 
succumbing to the general failure in the finances of the country, so that 
their stocks have become depreciated or worthless, and their employes 
discharged or mutinous on account of reduced wages. Real estate has 
depreciated to less than half of what it would have brought four years 
ago ; much of it cannot be sold for any price, and mortgages of one- 
quarter its value, if foreclosed, swallow up the whole. The thriving 
and enterprising farmer of the West, especially, feels this rise in the 
value of money, as compared with labor or property. With the hardy 
toil of years, he has opened and improved his farm, and the compara 
tive small loan, which laid but a light weight on the resources of his land 
in prosperous times, and with a sufficiency money, is now threatening 
to swallow up the labor of his life ! Even the banks and the loaning 
institutions, not being able to invest their money on " good securities," 
are embarrassed on both sides — the failure of their debtors, that throws 
so many of the securities on their hands, and makes " bonds and 
mortgages " a " glut in the market," and the difficulty of making any 
new loans or investments — so that money " goes a begging " at one 
and a half and two per cent. ! 

But these moneyed men are very patient with their troubles in this 
respect, for they know that money is appreciating in value all the time ! 
It may be now that loanable capital, on good security, is gathered 
largely in the moneyed centres, and much of it comparatively idle ; but 
this is no great hardship to those that own the capital, in the presence of 
the fact, that money is appreciating in its relative value while waiting for 
active investment. This is the secret why money seeks no active in- 
vestment now, but only gopd security, or idleness. The country at 
large, its various industrial enterprises, and its labor, are in want of 
money. Is there any fact more obvious than this ? Nor is it the rich 
that want money, but the poor, as a necessary condition for selling the 
labor which is their sole possession. Hence, to the poor man, cheap 
money is equivalent to cheap bread. 

Ever since 1865, this country has been losing its money. ■ 

During the last ten years, thousands of millions of money have been 
swallowed in Government and railroad bonds and other securities, and in 
importations which, till lately, have far exceeded our exportations. It is 
a fact on record in the books of the United States Treasury, and by such 
authorities as Spaulding in his " History of the Currency," Mr. May- 
nard, Chairman of the Committee on Banking and Currency in Congress, 



99 

and Spinner, Assistant-Secretary of the Treasury, that this country 
had, up to the year 1865, issued in different forms of currency and 
treasury notes, current as money among the people, $2,192,395,527 ! 
This vast sum had, on the first of November, 1873, shrunk to $631,- 
488,676 (see Congressional Record, March 31, 187-4). 

In-the year 1865 there was in the hands of the people, as a currency, 
$58 per head ; in 1875 the currency of all kinds was only a little more 
than $17 per head. 

You may call this currency a vast debt of the people, as it was in 
curred by the Government to save the life of the nation. But it was 
money — every dollar of it. It was paid by the Government " for value 
received ; " it was used by the people to pay their debts, to measure 
the value of their property, and, as your present Secretary of the 
Treasury said in his seat in the Senate, " every citizen of the United 
States had conformed his business to the legal tender clause." 

This currency was also the creature of law, and under the entire con- 
trol of the Government, but held in trust for the benefit of the people, 
as are all its functions. Was it either just or humane to allow 
$1,100,000,000 of this currency, a large part bearing no interest, 
but paying labor, and fructifying every business enterprise, to be. 
absorbed into bonds in the space of eight years, bearing a heavy 
interest, of which the bondholder bore no share ? (See Spaulding's 
" History of the Currency.'') The Government seemed to administer 
this vast currency as if there were but one interest in the nation 
to be promoted, and that the profit of those who desired to fund 
their money with the greatest security, and to make money scarce 
and of high rate of interest ! This is the issue of the hour ; this 
is the battle of the people, and for the people, in which the present 
administration is called upon to declare which side it will take. If- this 
policy was unjust and ruinous at the first, it is unjust and ruinous 
now. If it has led us from prosperity into adversity, the only course 
is to retrace our steps, to stop this funding any longer, and give the 
people back their money, justly earned, and hardly won by the toils, 
perils, and sacrifices of the people. But as this vast and life-giving cur- 
rency has now gone irretrievably into bonds, and the bonds have gone 
largely abroad for importations, that have still further depressed the 
industry of our people by buying abroad what we could and should 
have manufactured at home, I would respectfully suggest the following 
policy for your administration in the present emergency and for the fu- 
ture prosperity of the people of this country : 

' First. Let the Government give immediate relief to unemployed 
labor, either through definite methods of help, given to settlers of unoc- 
cupied lands in the West, or by great and obvious public improvements 
which are seen to be necessary to the prosperity and safety of the coun- 
try — such as a North-western and a South-western Railroad. Both 
these methods might be used, in view of the great distress, now, of the 
laboring classes. The railroads will invite settlements, protect the 
country from Indian wars, more costly than the railroads themselves, 
and give employment and the money which will enable the poor man 
to settle the lands. Even State and municipal help might be evoked to 



100 

this end of employing labor, by issuing currency, for the bonds of 
States and Municipalities that could employ labor profitably in any local 
improvements. 

Secondly. Restore the silver coinage as a legal tender ; and while it 
swells the currency, it may be made as light as paper, for transportation, 
by "Bills of Exchange," or by a currency that represents silver. The 
demonetization of silver was a trick of the enemies of the poor man's 
currency. The remonetization of silver will be a great relief now, in the 
depression of all business, if not the final and best measure. 

Tliirdly. Let us adopt a permanent policy of public finance that shall 
hereafter control both the volume and the value of the national currency,' 
in the interest of the whole people, and not of a class. Let us have a 
national currency fully honored by the Government, and not as now, 
partially demonetized — the sole currency and legal tender of the coun- 
try, taken for all duties and taxes, and interconvertible with the bonds, 
at a low but equitable rate of interest. This will forever take the crea- 
tion of currency, and its extinction, out of the hands of banks and those 
interested in making it scarce and high, and put it completely under 
the control of law and the interests of the people. 

Fourthly. Let us promote and instruct industry, all over the land, by 
founding, under National, State and municipal encouragement, Industri- 
al Schools of every kind that can advance skill in labor. The rich need 
the literary and professional school and colleges, and they should have 
them ; but the poor need the industrial school of art and science / and 
it should be made the duty of the local governments to provide a prac- 
tical education for the mass of the people, as the best method of " guar- 
anteeing to every State a republican form of government." 

Fifthly. The Government can do much towards promoting the indus- 
try of this people, and encouraging capital to enter upon works of manu- 
facture, by a judicious tariff upon all importations of which we have the 
raw material in abundance, and the labor ready to be employed in the 
production. It is no answer to this to say, " Buy where you can 
cheapest." I have said before, " We cannot, as a nation, buy anything 
cheap that leaves our own good raw materials unused, and our own labor 
unemployed." 

Sixthly. Let us have a civil service as well organized and specific as 
the military or naval service. Let us take the civil service out of mere 
political partisanship, and put such appointments upon the ground of 
honesty, capacity, and educational fitness, so that no man can hold his 
office and receive its emoluments without a faithful discharge of the 
duties prescribed by the law. The noble and efficient recognition that' 
you have already given to this principle, in divorcing politics from 
the ordinary clerical and civil service of the country, entitles you to the 
thanks of every citizen. 

By these methods of immediate relief and future administration, we 
may pass safely, I think, the great crisis through which our beloved 
country is now laboring. 

" The producing cause of all prosperity," says Daniel Webster, " is 
labor, labor, labor." * * * 

"The Government was made to protect this industry — to give it both 



101 



encouragement and security. To this very end, with this precise -object 
inX power was given to Congress over the currency, and over the 

m °S:XteZCnL that are now working against the rights of ]abo r 
anf th^lue nterests of a republican government, are njsukoos and 
Concealed under plausible reasons, yet the ^Z^Z^TsC^ll 
tions now, is no less than in the inception of the rebellion J*« ^°°^ 
public to its centre. It is only another _ ohgarchy another £ fem« 
power that is asserting itself against the interest of the .hole ^peop*. 
There is, fast forming in this country, an aristocracy of ^^™ ^ 
form of aristocracy that can curse the prosperity of any count y. For such 
an aristocracy fcw »o country-" absenteeism i, living a^^e^hey 
draw their income from the country, is one of its common ^^ actenstlCS ; 
Such an aristocracy is without soul and without pa riotism Let u 
save our country from this, its most T"^'^"^^™ 
mpmT Let vour fellow-citizens beseech you, Mi. rresiaem, lu v 

of au abundant and a sound currency, as the South The Southern ^pe 

5£*££S^ money ^ disUdhutedauujng rts w mg and 
enterprising population ; and x^J^ -£ «*j^ feo „, 

Adn^tS^Vose who now sway the ^cia^t^a . th 
country cannot see their great opportv u, ity-^ ' IC » f^Texecvite 

*=££ is. is t? EC- £5 St-*- m 

their posterity." 



AUG 2 | 



